The Nosey Neighbour Factor

In my opinion, every love story has conflict that results out of a factor I like to call ‘What Will The Neighbours Think?’

This is a measure of conflict and worry in a relationship stemming exclusively from an outside source; moreover, we’re not talking direct intervention here, but more of an emotional or expectational wedge that’s driven between people, simply based on their speculations of… well, what the neighbours will think of their doings.

Now, this doesn’t have to mean actual, literal neighbours, (though if you’re doing Three’s Company, then it probably does.) Rather, the ‘neighbours’ can refer to any outside force, group, family, friends… basically, anyone whom the subjects of the love story are influenced by, and anyone with the power to change their minds simply by existing.

Romeo and Juliet, for instance, is basically all about the What Will The Neighbours Think. Left to their own devices, those crazy kids would run off and elope in Act II, and there’d be a whole lot of awkward standing around and head-scratching for the second half of the play, because the leads are off canoodling in Venice or whatever. But because of the high WWTNT value, they’re forced apart, then together, then apart, then there’s a lot of stabbing and poisoning and everyone dies. (Sorry if I spoilt the ending for you, but… it’s Shakespeare. Nine times out of ten, ‘Everyone dies’ is practically the subtitle.)

The antithesis of WWTNT is of course conflict that’s generated inside a relationship, problems and issues that the involved parties are forced to accept aren’t anyone’s fault, just… bad stuff that happened, or people drifting apart, or disagreements of a sort that you can’t blame on the neighbours. Inter-Relationship conflict is harder to quantify because it’s messier, and because it can’t be personified through a wacky-Kramer-buddy bursting in and tsk-tsking at the goings-on.

I don’t think, overall, one form of conflict is always better than the other; going through my favourite love story movies, Brokeback Mountain is almost solely about what everyone might think of Jack and Ennis, whereas The Notebook quietly brushes away its WWTNT trappings to let Noah and Allie realize that they’ve got their own screwed-up problems to deal with regardless of judgemental mothers and hoity-toity society lines. And I love both films, because you can get wonderful conflict and drama out of either aspect, as long as it’s painted properly. On the whole, though, I think I prefer Inter-Relationship conflict, because most of the time the WWTNT can be quietly defused with the equivalent of saying ‘I don’t care what the neighbours think’ and that’s that. IR conflict can’t necessarily be swept aside, and most of the time, there’s more generated from that.

Addition is interesting (and unconventional!) because there’s a very low WWTNT value; part of that’s because we couldn’t afford to pay extras to come in and be our Mr. and Mrs. Roper. But even the offstage folks in the script are pretty open and nonjudgmental; the closest we get to a nosey neighbour trope is Daren’s landlady, who… is kind of awesome, honestly, and has a wonderful moment we hear about midway through the play. But aside from that, there’s no one to really stand around and clutch pearls and whisper to each other that they don’t know why those three young men are spending so much time together in that little apartment, my word, Alice, it’s immoral is what it is. Shame! Not much of that going on in the script.

Sure, there’s some subtle WWTNT stuff going on; Ben and Logan mildly worrying what everyone will think of their thing with Daren, Logan’s persistent curiosity about how Daren’s family regards him, the unspoken fear of how the whole shebang would function in society if they just came out in the open as a threesome… for the most part, though, the conflict is very internal, as the trio bounce off one another and try to figure out who’s right and who’s wrong and who’s scared and who’s confused. A lot of that, I think is that with a three-way love story, you can have multiple viewpoints and ideologies, and you don’t need the constant interruptions of the neighbours to generate conflict; there’s plenty to debate already. It’s why Closer works so well; it plays the emotions of four people up against one another, and that’s enough drama to keep the story going for awhile.

But let’s open this one up to discussion: what are your specific/favourite love stories with odd levels of WWTNT? How do they work or not work for you? Which style of conflict generation do you prefer? Are there any glaringly obvious facts I’m misplacing? And really, what will the neighbours think about all this?

David Johnston
Actor (Logan)