CONFLICT
I've been trying to spell out in clear terms the different types of dramatic conflicts. And then I went to the PEN panel discussion last night, and something just clicked in my brain when the panelists were talking about novels vs plays. All primary conflicts are either cathartic or traumatic. So that by the end, the story is working toward a funeral or a marriage. And that is a literal or symbolic endpoint. It's about harmony and love vs. disharmony and death. Oedipus ends in tragedy, shame, mutilation, and separation from society. FRIENDS ends in wedding plots. The pilot spells this out at the beginning: it is about catharsis and how all our conflicts are comedic yet help us grow in relationships, roommates, and friendships. You can relax, no one is going to gouge their eyes out and wander the earth as a poor, wrecked soul. The only question is how we are going to maneuver to this endpoint? And on the way there, they may be moments of tragedy...but even that will serve the greater arc of where the story is going: toward catharsis/healing/unity.
In addition to the major notes, there are two minor types of dramatic conflict: poetic and philosophical. These minor note conflicts support the overall story and larger conflict. A poetic conflict is a married couple trying to fix a leak in their house. The audience knows that this isn't really about the 'leak.' The storyteller draws our attention to something small because it foreshadows what's going to happen in this domestic drama. In the Sundance movie HOW TO GET DIVORCED DURING THE WAR, the poetic conflict is LARGE and real: Russia invades Ukraine. But the real invasion and its ripple effects are all meant to serve the fictional characters in a domestic drama who decide to get a divorce one day before the start of a war. Do we care about the war? Yes, but we know that's a poetic metaphor for the characters' journey.
The other conflict is philosophical, and it is used much more in novels. It can be used in plays and screenplays, but very sparingly, because we would rather see philosophical conflict implemented into a dramatic situation. In COMING TO AMERICA, Hakeem walks into a barbershop, and the 2 black barbers and the Jewish customer are debating about Cassius Clay changing his name to Muhammad Ali. They go back and forth, and it's funny, but why is it there? They're debating about identity and whether you can change your name, aka change your fate. And in walks Hakeem, an African prince who had an arranged marriage and kingdom, but has fled. He changed his name and persona to come to America and look for a wife. The philosophical comedic argument underlies the main character, who is literally walking into the barbershop at that moment to change his life by getting a haircut to blend into NYC. The Muhammad Ali argument wins: you can change your fate. Most ppl accept Muhammad Ali's name change, and by the end of the movie, most ppl accept Hakeem's change.
But you can take a philosophical argument as a jumping-off point for something traumatic or cathartic. Case in point is the other Eddie Murphy movie philosophically paired with COMING TO AMERICA, which is also about whether we can change our course in life: TRADING PLACES.
In TRADING PLACES, two old, rich, white guys debate whether success is about nature or nurture. This is purely a philosophical argument between two people with no real stakes, so the writer knows they need to dramatize the nature vs. nurture debate into something active and somewhat Biblical: a bet. Take two people at opposite ends of the spectrum and switch their environments and resources. Dan Aykroyd is a young, successful protege who has led a privileged life. Eddie Murphy is a street hustler and criminal who has led a rough life. The two rich men -playing God and Devil in the Book of Job- decide to see what happens if they force the two hapless young men to 'trade places.' They give Eddie Murphy all the advantages of being a privileged individual, and they will strip Dan Aykroyd of his privileges and send him into poverty. Very quickly, Eddie turns his life around and becomes a successful stock trader while Dan's life goes to hell with alcoholism and violence. Eddie is experiencing the comedy of cathartic conflict, while Dan is getting slammed with tragedy after tragedy. But what makes the movie really satisfying is when our two Jobs wake up and realize they are puppets in a $1 bet. So Eddie and Dan team up to get catharsis: bring down the rich people who played with their lives. The black and white working-class unite to stick it to the rich. And they end up on the beach together, in love with their partners, sipping drinks in the sun. Symbolic wedding of harmony and happiness.
The narrative trajectory we are on is trauma or catharsis. Epics do both. "War and Peace" is about marriages and divorce against the backdrop of the Napoleonic War. Over the course of over 1000 pages the tragedies and catharsis switch from the fictional characters to the war history and back again. Eventually, there is a grand catharsis on war, heartbreak, and love.
TYPES OF CONFLICT
1. Traumatic - disharmony, death, separation
2. Cathartic: harmony, love, community
3. Poetic: a metaphor -large or small- that points toward a bigger conflict
4. Philosophical: debate about a worldview that's usually given to side characters or small moments. But it can serve as a jumping-off point for dramatizing the philosophy.
EXPECTATIONS
And conflict is based on expectations. I think there are 3:
-the expectation of love
-expectation of hate/fighting
- expectation of escape.
The character starts a scene and expects one of three things to happen with someone else in that scene, literally or symbolically. If it's a job interview or a loan application, they expect some friendship or bond with the interviewer if they want to get that thing. But then blank happens.
In FLEABAG, Phoebe Waller-Bridge enters a scene with the expectation of getting a bank loan, but -whoops- she lifts up her sweater and realizes she's only wearing a bra underneath it, and she flashes the loan manager. She forgot to put on a shirt. It's embarrassing but also indicative of her recklessness (sexual and professional), and it becomes a fight scene. Later on, we find the loan manager was accused of sexual harassment, so he really took offense to the unexpected flashing while Phoebe's character thought he was just being stuck up. So that one moment of conflict underlies her character, the loan manager's character and his guilt, and the trajectory of her story. The loan manager eventually gives her the loan, and we get love. And then escape.
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