through the quotidian bean... with

Rowan Atkinson’s evergreen portrayal of the inscrutable Mr. Bean has become, through the litmus test of time passing, a staple of TV comedy, a meandering figure that seems to remain solitary in its status of cultural possession. Atkinson consummately represents someone who does not dictate his actions in accordance with any sense of what would be considered polite. Or of sound mind. What I mean to say is that when you watch “Mr. Bean” back, he is kind of actually just an insane guy, but a happy one. A titan of physical comedy, Rowan Atkinson’s performance is really wonderful, but if you squint a little, there is an interesting examination of social rules going on, and what happens when they are shattered.

While a testament to the strengths of physical comedy, especially in an era when this style was otherwise unsung,

“Mr. Bean” also serves as an interesting contemplation of the intricate web of societal constructs that govern human interactions. I don’t intend to suggest that Mr Bean is really an intellectual pursuit of psychological exploration, he is really just a silly little guy, so proved by a vast percentage of his dialogue being just “Teddy”. But he can be sort of read as a treatise on how often contained within comedy, there is a reliance upon our trusted network of generally excepted social patterns, and the necessary manoeuvring it takes for them to be both obeyed and disrupted.

WORDS by Rowena Breen

Let’s talk about how this analysis of our social conventions relates to the position of the audience in TV. I think that the dynamic between an audience and performance is especially unique in the case of Mr. Bean. He is an interesting testament to the interplay between audience and performance, and how our own implicit expectations, which we often take for granted, determine the context of the media that we consume

Throughout each episode, and the Beaniverse (Bean universe) as a whole, there remains a sense of continuity. He has a teddy, a girlfriend, a car, and each episode it is clear what his ambition for that day is.

These daily ambitions aren’t the crazy part; it’s his execution. What began as a normal attempt at a day at the beach, has sprung into completely avoidable madness. It is these rules of engagement that Mr Bean, initially acting in accordance with, recklessly abandons, and so his circumstances descend into a comic nosedive of the absurd. While each Beanuation (Bean situation) itself remains that of the exceptionally ordinary, it is his intuition and impulses that seem to plunge Mr Bean into situations of bizarre chaos. This is a demonstration of the universality that silliness achieves. He needs few words, as he is harnessing the deeply recognisable and transforming it into an absurd commotion.

This transfer between the ordinary and the odd, does have a sort of reflection in that of mind and externality in an interesting suggestion of our power to completely disrupt social dynamics, on purpose or otherwise. Turns out, these rules that dictate our social interactions that appear so necessary and unbreakable, can actually be quite delicate.

These notions of balance between odd and ordinary, action and inaction, stillness and motion, are sewn throughout the world that Mr Bean stumbles through. This thread of normality runs consistently through his adventures of nonsensicality. He is both the every-man and simultaneously the least relatable person ever. Viewers watch and think, I would literally never do that, but also, he’s just like me. His Beanearance (Bean appearance) is that of the discernibly usual, and so too are his initial whims. He wants to make a sandwich, to go swimming, to cheat on an exam. It is this invitation of relatability that, when disturbed (because Mr Bean has decided to drill a hole through his hotel neighbour’s wall in order to use his bath), warps our sense of where he ends and we begin. In this comedic dance, the audience oscillates between the familiar and the bizarre along with Mr. Bean, our laughter serving as a recognition of the incongruities that surround us. The human condition is that of the unsure, and this unfaltering character of comedic sensibility recognises the hilarity of trying to make the right call.

One of my favourite things about Mr Bean is how often he becomes unapologetically frustrated with his deemed incompetence of the people that surround him. He would like to be able to take a bath and registers it as obviously absurd that his neighbour has got one and he hasn’t. Naturally, he uses a power drill to create a hole into the bathroom next door, and brings his rubber duck. He is so secure of himself and what he wants, that when people who are otherwise in tessellation with the rest of society get in his way, he becomes very quickly impatient

Mr. Bean has the unshakable conviction that he deserves a bath, and hopes he can discreetly sneak into the room next door, using his power drill. But there is a sense, a small glimmer of recognition within the audience, that maybe he should have a bath in his hotel room. Maybe he should dismantle the infrastructure of his hotel wall and invade another guest’s private room. His fearlessness is what takes his insane decision making from a position of “I see where he is coming from” to actual and sincere madness. Mr. Bean has tapped into a reservoir of determination that eludes his audience, which is what makes him stand out within the contextual circumstance of the relatable quotidian. It is an irrational pole within the scaffolding of rationality that contains him and us. Because we can all see ourselves in the framework within which he is operating, his sideways approach to the mundane stands out that much more, and takes him from a silly guy to a full on Bean. We understand wanting to give a busker some change, but when the rest of us realise we haven’t got any on us, we don’t set out our hat and start doing a little dance.