Narm Discussion - Television Tropes & Idioms

Ooh, ooh! Does Jessie Spano shouting, "I'm so excited! I'm so scared!" count as a Narm?

Later: I see you already added it to the Saved By The Bell page. Ha! I'm adding it here.

Drop Dead Gorgias: I'm so glad you got that too. It was the one that sprung to mind right after the actual Narm. BTW. This is my new favorite website ever.

jajasoon: Narm seems like a pretty subjective category here. For me, Nate's death cry totally worked - it was meant to be ironic & undercut the seriousness of death (and the character's own self-seriousness), not a heart-stopping moment of drama. Saved by the Bell isn't trying for irony the same way every episode of Six Feet Under does... (see Salon

for a good analysis of the Narm event)

Gus: BTW, the Heather who wrote that is One Of Us.

Not That Heather: Am not!

Gus: Yes, you are. You are a Troper-geek. With an agent. ;-)

stabbyfairy: I'm not entirely sure if this counts but the other night when I went to see Spiderman 3, during what was meant to be the saddest scene in the film every single person in the cinema burst out laughing at Tobey Maguire's trembling lip... XD

Harpie Siren: That didn't happen when I saw it... people actually did cry... but his lip was rather freakey... O_o

stabbyfairy: Hah, maybe the cinema staff put something in the air that makes comedies seem funnier, and put it in the wrong screen. >_> <_<

TJ Devil 02: I'd like Heart Burn Kid in here for a ruling, since he's the most likely person to know what I'm talking about: Most tributes to Eddie Guerrero from the WWE. Yes, they were heartfelt, but there's something very very humorous about seeing, say, Batista (at 6'6 and 317 with about -1% body fat) choking on tears when taken out of context.

Passion of the Christ was one big Narm for me. Not only was the whole movie one big overblown torture scene, but Jesus was inexplicably free of body hair. Would that be too controversial to mention on the page?

Phartman: ...Yet Eli Roth is a genius for making Hostel.

HeartBurn Kid: TJ, I'd have to say no on that one, because one of the defining characteristics on the Narm, at least as I see it, is that you don't have to really take it out of context for it to be funny. Or rather, it comes off so silly that you can't really help but take it out of context, even as you watch the show. Also, I may just have a little problem with adding people's genuine emotion about the very real death of a close friend from the day after it happened to this page. If it was a storyline death, that'd be a different story. Of course, I'm tempted to make an exception for Stephanie Mc Mahon's comments on the post-9/11 episode of Smackdown, when she compared the towers coming down to her father getting prosecuted for trafficking in steroids...

Radien: Hi from a TV Tropes newbie. I would seriously like to add Final Fantasy VI's opera scene into this trope, but I thought I'd run it by you guys. I've encountered many people (mostly teenagers a few years younger than me) who said that the opera scene was so "beautiful and touching" that it made them cry. While I agree that the music was beautiful, I used to be in theater. Consequently, the act of having to remember the lines that you only got a chance to read once (with no rehearsals) was so much of an "actor's nightmare" that I laughed continuously throughout the whole scene.... especially at the incorrect options they gave you! I'm quite curious whether anyone else agrees that it is a narm. Some may think it's not funny, while others may think that the cartoonyness was on purpose. What do you all say?

Eakin: I would say that that not making your characters wait for weeks while Celes memorized and rehearsed the lines in question falls under Acceptable Breaks From Reality. Besides, she only had to hold out for a few scenes until Setzer showed up or, if you did poorly, was crushed by an anvil.

Stm177: I chopped out some of the first person references like "I believe so and so is impossible to get through without laughing"

Bob: I'm still convinced that both of the Pirates Of The Caribbean examples do this on purpose. Would you mind if I put that part back in?

Charred Knight: A Narm is an unintentionally funny scene, the Mobile Oppresion Palace, a Giant mecha piloted by sterotypical Jewish crabs is INTENTIONALLY FUNNY.

Demetrios: Okay, okay, you got me there.

Okay, does it count as Narm if it's only funny because of outside influences? Let me explain: a dramatic scene in Card Captor Sakura becomes funny because, when Touya is yelling Yukito's name, he sounds exactly like Shuichi in Gravitation (since they have the same seiyuu). What do you guys think?

Shay Guy: Fanfic probably has loads of examples, so this'd be a major can of worms, but can I add one anyway?

Fast Eddie: pulled this Natter ...

I remember the game in that episode looked like the worst one ever made. An enemy did absolutely nothing while the character slowly hacked with a sword. I doubt the creators had even seen a video game.

//later: pulled it again. We don't use "I" in the articles. Look, try it like this:

The game in that Special Victims Unit episode mentioned above looked like the worst one ever made. An enemy did absolutely nothing while the character slowly hacked with a sword. The creators had likely never seen a video game.

Charred Knight: This is not Epelptic Trees, Draco In Leather Pants, or Listen I Have An Incredibly Stupid Interpertation Of Final Fantasy VII Where The Heroes Are Villans For Doing Terroristic Attack That Kill Innocent People ! If you have actually played FF VII you would have seen that Avalance has killed innocent people, but Shinra is worse, and Sephiroth wants to destroy the planet to become a god. Also deleted some instances of comedy being mistaken for Narm.

That Other 1 Dude: What in the hell does that rant about Tim Buckley have to do with Narm?

I think it was trying to say that the whole gaming religion arc was narm, but that entry quickly devolved into Tim Buckley bashing.

Maybe it's time to split this article into separate pages for each genre? It's starting to get a bit large.

I recall a kind of "real Life" while watching a stage production of West Side Story in which what was presumably a real hand gun containing blanks was used during Tony’s death scene. The audience was so shocked by the loudnes sof the gunfire, that they then proceeded to burst out laughing during what was intended to be one of the most poignant moments in musical history.

OK. Does the Susan/Caspian goodbye in the Prince Caspian movie qualify?. One semi-flirty line and 1.5 meaningful glances each way and all of sudden it's like Casablanca.

Danel: I feel old. I remember when the Narm article was short, sweet and funny, but now it's ballooned into some unholy compound of Complaining About Moments You Dont Like and the easily-confused expressing bewilderment about what they were meant to be feeling during a scene, deciding if it's not flat awesome it must be Narm. Bleh.

Anonymous: Wow, the Narm page has always been bad but after the split pretty much all of the Narm pages have become one gigantic Complaining About Shows You Dont Like trollfest. Having pages for individual shows instead of just mediums does not help! It's worse than some of the stuff in the Darth Wiki. Everyone who likes these pages should get kicked by a horse and die. Goodnight.

Insanity Prelude: Awfully harsh, aren't you? (Yes, I get a laugh out of these pages.)

Premium Irritation: Doesn't this need an 'Other' section for examples? There are some things that don't fall into any of the categories there are pages for.

Caswin: I second that. (Suspeeense.)

Haven: Is there really no Comic Books category? I find that hard to believe.

Cassy: Say, shouldn't we cutlist the "Narm: Manga" page and put all the examples in "Narm: Anime"? It's ridiculously short, plus many of the examples in Anime are from mangas, since many mangas have anime versions and the other way around.

Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!

The Gunheart: You know, seeing how many examples were clearly meant to be funny and simply had poor timing, I think it would be save to move many examples to the anemic Level Breaker page.

What would one call a blantant narm spoof. Like making EVERYTHING seem like narm to the point its obviously made to be hil-fucking-arious.

Occono: Should we perhaps have a specific Trope for failed Tear Jerker moments, as the focus here seems to be failed Dramatic Shocks? Tearless Jerking perhaps?

Houdini: Jerking... I can't let that go without a snicker. No, no, please don't call it that. The pervert inside me couldn't take it.

High Five: Hee. I like the new picture.

Turtleducks: AND I INTEND TO KEEP IT THERE. Seriously, there's an editing war going on for its caption. There's a nice medium that's been reached, though.

Fluffyskunk: There should be a page for Real Life Narm. Case in point: Napoleon on his throne

. (Don't tell me you didn't giggle.)

Insanity Prelude: Wikipedia editors

are confused by Narm.

Deadpool Fan: Uh... whats with the spelling? N Arm?

Pardon me. I am not sure I fully understand this trope. Is "narm" solely something that is unintentionally funny? Or is "narm" also something where the the writer, actor, and/or director were trying very hard for a certain mood and failed? I think I understand that "narm" is something that's supposed to be creepy but instead is unintentionally funny. What if something is intended to be funny, but leaves the viewer staring at the screen, brow furrowed, saying "I know that was supposed to be funny, but that's just creepy/badly timed/inappropriate/painfully unfunny?" Is this also "narm," or is this something else?

...also, and perhaps again I do not fully understand, I was under the impression that "tropes" were common ideas, common plot elements, common themes. But when I look at the examples of "narm," at least in visual media, it looks more and more to me like it's not so much an idea or a theme as a failure on the part of the director to get the emotional tone of the scene to match what the scriptwriter had in mind, with poorly written scenes also contributing. It's hard to imagine any actor being able to say "My arm is numb! Numb arm! Narm narm narm narm!" without looking stupid, no matter how loudly the director yelled "No, it's tragic! You're dying! Stop giggling, this is serious!"

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