Oddity

Oddity in fiction needs to be handled properly. You can’t just throw it in and expect an audience to respond. It needs to be correctly situated.

For example, the wonderfully inventive screenplay by Jules Feiffer for Robert Altman’s Popeye had gloriously weird and wonderful characters, yet audiences did not respond. Something similar happened in John Patrick Shanley’s Joe Versus the Volcano.

In contrast, Tim Burton’s most beloved films, such as Edward Scissorhands and The Nightmare before Christmas, made a point of contrasting all of the wonderful oddness with nominal normalcy. The audience was placed in the position of the oddballs, being stared at by the “normals”, and realizing that normal is relative.

The master of this is Joss Whedon. It is a given in the Buffyverse that only Buffy the vampire slayer and her loser friends are capable of saving the world. Anyone who is normal, popular or well adjusted is completely useless. Without the help of Sunnydale’s freaks and geeks, they would all be vampire meat.

Whedon takes this even farther in Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. In this upside-down story world, you can’t be “us” unless you are “them”. The only sympathetic character is the evil genius intent on world destruction. He is beloved by audiences, who find themselves booing and hissing the hero who tries to stop him.

It’s like Richard III retold as Hamlet. Except with better songs.