Expectations and norms

Dog lifts leg on giant portrait of a declaiming man aiming for his mouth

What makes this image funny?

Humour is complicated to unpack, but we can point out a couple of things.

This image is vivid because of the juxtaposition of the dog and the man's head, but that's not enough to make it funny.

The comedy comes from the dog cocking his leg into the man's mouth, and this is funny because it's a violation of a social norm or expectations: dogs shouldn't be peeing in people's mouths.

It's made even funnier by the way the dog is looking at the camera, like it knows it's breaking the rules.

It's also important to point out that status and power are key to making this image work.

We feel like it's safe to find the image funny because the person in the photo looks like they have some amount of power or profile.

If that portrait was a crying child refugee and the dog was an army dog leashed by a soldier, then the picture wouldn't be as funny because we'd see the soldier as the one with more status and power than the child, so we'd think they were a bully.

But when it's a wandering street dog cocking his leg on a giant photo of what we presume to be a high-status celebrity or political candidate—that power differential makes it funny.

It's not the point of this lesson, but this—challenging status relationships—is a key function of comedy.

This snippet from My Family and Other Animals aims for a similar effect. What are the contrasting social norms and expectations?

"Didn't you notice?" she asked. "None of them had a bathroom."

Mr. Beeler stared at Mother with bulging eyes.

"But Madame," he wailed in genuine anguish, "what for you want a bathroom? Have you not got the sea?"

My Family and Other Animals(1956)

Base norm: People go to the toilet in their bathrooms.
Contrasting norm: People go to the toilet in the sea.

Each of these is a kind of social belief or expectation about how people should behave in a given situation.

The contrast tells us something about each person in the relationship.

Here are a couple of examples that contrast social norms and expectations between two characters:

"Toss it overboard," said Jakob. "Anything that's not on the permit has to go back in the water."

Mikolaj stepped back as if the captain were deranged.

"Are you kidding?" he cried. "Are you going to tear up a winning lottery ticket? We should be calling a TV station!"

"You can’t wear headphones during your shift," Mr Cameron said.

Ivan moved his long hair away from his left ear.

"It’s only one. I can hear just fine through my other ear." He said it like this was the natural order, and everything he’d been doing until now was perfect.

For whatever situation you've been writing about, think of a social rule that everyone is supposed to obey.
Then write about a character doing something completely different.

You can go in either order:

A character breaks a norm and someone tries to correct them.
Or a character is enforcing a norm and someone else tries to break it.

As an aside, you might notice that this particular type of contrast establishes a potential source of conflict between the characters. We'll talk more about this later.

Describe two characters expressing or enacting different social norms.

So far we've talked about contrasts between people, but we all have complex interior lives.

What happens when the contrast is inside us?

Contrast & juxtaposition

Expectations and norms