Again, there’s the disgusting component. Bodily sounds, smells, and pastimes gross us out—perhaps because they seem unhygienic, and there are plenty of evolutionary reasons we’d want to avoid sickness.
Yet there seems to be more going on here. Part of what makes this experience annoying is that Sarah chooses not to clip her fingernails on the subway. This is a value-system trespass. There is no law against clipping your nails on the train. You’re expected to be able to put up with that behavior, even though it offends your sensibilities, and this annoys you.
Although breaking social mores seems different from having your tongue burned by a chili pepper, they do have something important in common. For each, there is a thin line between pleasant and unpleasant. An unexpected and minor subversion of your social expectations is also pretty close to the recipe for comedy. Belch loudly at a family barbecue, and you can see for yourself how this works. Everyone in elementary school will probably find this sudden, surprising transgression hysterically funny. Everyone else, annoying. It’s this thin line that Hollywood likes to keep a close eye on.
If science has largely ignored the topic of annoyingness, the dramatic arts have not. Movies and plays are filled with annoying characters, meaning that screenwriters and playwrights have to become de facto psychologists. They have to capture the personality traits of what makes someone annoying and put them into a character that everyone will recognize as annoying.
There may seem to be a paradox here. For the most part, we would normally go to great lengths to avoid spending time with someone who is annoying. Yet watching annoying people from a safe distance can actually be tolerable, even amusing. Surely, there is some guilty pleasure to be had from watching Tina Fey get so annoyed that her head is ready to explode.
Playwright Neil Simon and director Gene Saks clearly recognized that possibility when they made the movie The Odd Couple, starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. Matthau played the part of Oscar Madison, a slovenly sportswriter. His New York apartment is a mess. The food in his refrigerator is growing mold. He’s divorced, happily so, and is chronically late with his alimony payments.
Jack Lemmon’s character, Felix Ungar, is the exact opposite. He’s devoted to his wife, even though she kicked him out of the house because of his annoying habits. He makes strange noises when he clears his throat. He’s painfully punctilious and a total neat freak.
The unkempt Madison offers to share his apartment with pressed-and-creased Ungar after his marriage collapses, but it’s immediately clear that bachelorhood is about the only thing these two have in common. Ungar offers to do a little “tidying up” after one of Madison’s poker games has left the apartment a total mess. When the sportswriter wakes up the next morning, the apartment looks like it’s ready for a photo shoot with House Beautiful, the previous night’s bacchanalia a distant memory.
At first, the transformation is pleasing. Even the rumpled Madison enjoys the laundry service and the home-cooked meals that Ungar is happy to provide. After a while, though, the constant dusting and tidying and spraying with air freshener get to be too much. Madison launches into a tirade. “I can’t take it anymore, Felix, I’m cracking up,” says Oscar. “Everything you do irritates me. And when you’re not here, the things I know you’re gonna do when you come in irritate me. You leave me little notes on my pillow. I told you 158 times I can’t stand little notes on my pillow. ‘We’re all out of cornflakes. F.U.’ Took me three hours to figure out F.U. was Felix Ungar!” Unger takes all of this in but is equally annoyed by Oscar’s lack of appreciation for his efforts.
Felix Ungar: I put order in this house. For the first time in months, you’re saving money. You’re sleeping on clean sheets. You’re eating hot meals for a change, and I did it.
Oscar Madison: Yes, that’s right. And then at night after we’ve had your halibut steak and your tartar sauce, I have to spend the rest of the evening watching you Saran Wrap the leftovers.
He shakes his head when Madison finishes his tirade with a complaint about the plate of pasta Unger made for their dinner.
Oscar Madison: Now kindly remove that spaghetti from my poker table. [Felix laughs.]
Oscar Madison: [What] the hell’s so funny?
Felix Ungar: It’s not spaghetti, it’s linguini. [Oscar picks up the linguini and hurls it against the kitchen wall.]
Oscar Madison: Now it’s garbage.
The movie is a classic. It’s hilarious. Yet both characters are, in their own ways, totally annoying. Who would want to watch annoying characters for two hours?
Tom Schulman has an explanation. Schulman is a successful screenwriter. His credits include Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and Dead Poets Society. In order to write successful movies, screenwriters have to get into the heads of their characters. They capture the essence of human behaviors and translate them to the screen. So, because the academic world of psychology has largely dropped the ball when it comes to understanding what we find annoying, people like Schulman may be able to offer some ideas.
“Normally, when we’re annoyed with people, we’re not allowed to express it,” says Schulman, “especially in public.” Take the experience of sitting on an airplane behind a small child. The child keeps popping his head over the back of the seat, hoping for a game of peek-a-boo. Schulman says this is cute for a while, but he likes to read on airplanes, so the Jack-in-the-box in front of him is an irritating distraction.
“Everybody’s watching, and I can’t act annoyed,” he says. “But in the movie I can laugh when the character gets annoyed.” So when Oscar Madison gets annoyed at Felix Ungar in The Odd Couple or when Oliver Hardy gets annoyed at Stan Laurel in the Laurel and Hardy movies or when everyone gets annoyed at Newman on Seinfeld or when Jackie Gleeson gets annoyed with Art Carney in The Honeymooners, we laugh. We can sympathize with the circumstances that are making the character annoyed, and we can laugh because it’s not happening to us.
Schulman has written a movie with precisely those qualities. It’s called What about Bob? and it may be the most rigorous investigation of annoyingness and annoyance ever performed. Bill Murray plays Bob Wiley, a man who is afraid of almost everything. He carries a tissue to open doors because he doesn’t want to risk getting germs from the doorknob. He walks up forty flights of stairs because he’s too scared to get into an elevator.
Richard Dreyfuss plays Leo Marvin, a self-important psychotherapist who agrees to take Bob on as a patient. Leo is calm, in charge, and the master of his universe. For Bob, in contrast, everything in the world is a challenge.
Dr. Leo Marvin: Are you married?
Bob Wiley: I’m divorced.
Dr. Leo Marvin: Would you like to talk about that?
Bob Wiley: There are two types of people in this world: Those who like Neil Diamond, and those who don’t. My ex-wife loves him.