Cause and Affect 3: Oh Geez...

My uncle flew re-fueler planes in Vietnam; just close enough to the action to hear it, but far enough to not really participate in it. The Air Force uses a so called "guard channel" that radio traffic about enemy planes is relayed over. The fighter pilots are a hard bunch - they have the speed and the firepower, so they are in the melee all the time, but again, they are battle-hardened, so they are uniquely unfazed about things that would make most other pilots take pause, at least. Routinely listening to traffic, you could hear various pilots relaying clipped, urgent messages back and forth to each other as they came in contact with bogeys, reacting in ways that seem fairly normal to the rest of us. But among this excited (possibly worried) chatter, the fighter pilots would stick out with simple, terse lines like: "Bogey, 10 O'clock, low. Got him." One particular story is during a refueling flight, my uncle's plane linked up with a fighter element, and the various pilots would go through, reading off their remaining fuel, until it gets to the last plane, who replies in a high-pitched squeal, "I'm almost out of fuel!"

I started watching "Curb Your Enthusiasm" recently, and I was thinking about it in terms of the idea of reaction-based scenework (see my two previous posts, Cause and Affect 1 & 2 in the archives), and Larry David would not, by any means, be considered a "badass". He is only interacting in a very "real" universe: there are no zombies, storm troopers, or supervillains; only the regular kind of everyday people even you could encounter on a regular basis. And in this world, he cannot fulfill the basic criteria for being a badass: 1) having the capability to affect change and 2) being willing to do whatever is necessary to make it happen. Larry David repeatedly shows that he lacks completely the capability to affect change (sure, he can make small gains, but he is so nebbish, tactless, and misanthropic that he routinely fails in relating to others) and is generally more than willing to allow perceived slights against him to go un-remedied and often un-addressed.

So then, why is this character able to maintain a story around himself? The answer is that Larry David is an anti-badass (The complete opposite of a badass. Goodbutt? Nicetush? Greatfanny?) Here's the way it works: Larry doesn't actually cause much change around him, but what he does do is changed by much of what goes on around him. Small stimuli from others around him, cause him to change greatly. He gets very bent out of shape, deeply affected, and dramatically changed in mental and emotional ways by every single one of those stimuli. Remember how we can tell if someone is a badass (or make someone a badass) by creating change to their affects? Batman starts fighting 20 thugs, and we know whether or not he is a badass by whether or not he beats them, and how easily. If he doesn't break a sweat, he is more badass, if he barely crawls away, he seems like less of a badass. If he is defeated, he's not a badass any longer. In effect:

[BF] = [HE] - [EOH]

Where:

BF = Badass Factor (how badass a character seems)

HE = Hero effect (what and magnitude of changes precipitated by hero

EOH = Effect on Hero (what changes the Other precipitates on hero)

Now, in Larry David's case, he effects so little change and is so greatly affected by everyone around him that his BF is effectively negative, which makes everyone else a badass. Remember that there has to be a response to stimuli in order to register change - you can't force the Other to change for you, but you can choose to be changed by stimuli, and because Larry is so changed everytime - greatly frustrated, embarrased, anxious, and angered by everything that goes on around him, that he makes everyone else badass.

Greatbehind?