flyingskull (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
flyingskull) wrote2007-08-11 04:41 pm
flyingskull) wrote2007-08-11 04:41 pm
Disneyan Shallowness or the Trivialisation of the Bastard Hero
There's a thing that's been annoying me for a long time... Well, alright, there's lot of things that annoy me, I'm easily irritated, but now I want to talk about one particular attitude towards a particular type of character (in all media) that annoys me to the point of rage.
Unnecessarily Reforming the 'Decent' Bastard
If Henry Fielding were a contemporary author and he'd written Jonathan Wild last year, tons of readers would love and adore Jonathan and proclaim him a Good Hero, because the novel proclaims it every other page, you see, and if the author tells you persistently a character is a Hero Noble and Brave, then he must surely be. (There's another can of worms with female characters which I'll explore in another post, this is way too long as it is) A few, more critically inclined readers would get that he's a criminal with no redeeming features whatsoever, but they would be screamed at by legions of fen who'd consistently quote Wild's noble words about virtue as gospel and testament to his pure heart.
Yet, as we all know, Jonathan Wild is a political satire about 'Great Men' who gain power by cheating, stealing, murdering and conniving. The 'Great Man' is a hypocrite and all his words are lies. "Judge people by what they do," Fielding says, "not by what they say."
In other words, many contemporary readers, probably beaten down by the Politically Correctedness of our times, need authorial statements to know whom to admire and whom to despise in a story and when the above are lacking the only parameter they follow is the 'virtuousness' of their lines of dialogue. A Hero must say Noble and Kind words to everyone and, if sometimes he gets righteously angry as well he may, he'll express his contempt for his enemy or rival with scathing words of Noble Outrage (like 'you loser' or 'you coward').
Literature forbid we have a hero who's also a rude bastard, how can readers (yes, yes, a lot of them NOT all of them) resolve the confusion about the character?
Well, it's easy. Thanks to the Disney School of Good Feelings and Feeling Good, readers (NOT all of them, and this is the last time I specify it. Take it as said every time) either decide the Bastard is not a Hero, after all, or they decide that he isn't really saying all those rude and insulting snarky things. Jane Austen had a wonderful career based on readers' blindness to conflicting information, after all. Shallowness as an analysis tool prescribes that there is NO subtext, nothing is ever implied and actions are not important at all. What does it matter if character A saves the world, if he's rude about it? What does it matter if character B has deep and strong feelings for character C, if he never says it?
I'm not very clear, am I? Alright, on with the examples.
Diana Wynne Jones' Christopher Chant, the Chrestomanci, is an arrogant, selfish, vain, sarcastic bastard. He's also a sort of permanent saviour of worlds who has a deep respect for justice and all societal Good Things and a deep respect, affection and love for his wife, children and friends. Does he express his feelings with loving words? Not on your life, because he's also a deeply private person - a consequence of his isolated childhood and subsequent betrayal by his mentor - one who'd die before exposing his 'weaker' feelings to rejection and ridicule; one who hides behind sarcasm and rudeness because he really thinks most people are fools who won't understand anything but assurance and brusqueness.
That is a fully realised three dimensional character, obviously, but do some readers see him as worthy of being the Hero of a Series? They are shocked by his rudeness, to them it doesn't compute. Here's an example:
... Cat's secret dread was that one day he would be there, making polite conversation, and actually see one of Gabriel's lives as it went away. If he did, he knew he would scream.
The dread of this happening so haunted Cat that he could scarcely speak to Gabriel for watching and waiting for a life to leave. Gabriel de Witt told Chrestomanci that Cat was a strange, reserved boy. To which Chrestomanci answered "Really?" in his most sarcastic way.
"How can Christopher be so mean to Cat?" some say. "How can Christopher be so mean to Gabriel?" some other, more astute readers say. "It makes Christopher not so enjoyable as a protagonist and hero," both the factions say and run off to write fanfics in which he's the personified Milk of Human Kindness and Never But Never Says an Unkind Thing to Anyone (he also says 'I love you' a hell of a lot). We can't have kindness through deeds and unsaid respect for others now, can we?
Pterry's Vimes. Yes, I'm the Queen of Obvious and am a descendant of Monsieur de Lapalisse. Deal with it. Vimes is another Bastard. He's not the arrogant, vain bastard, but the raging, violent, sarcastic (all Bastards are sarcastic, after all, it's a mark of Intelligence), selfish - yes, selfish. He really is. Selflessness isn't a healthy thing. - Bastard with a capital B. You won't catch Vimes saying "I love you, fluffybunny" to Sybil because A) Pterry's too good a writer to mire himself in sentimental nonsense and B) even if Vimes says mushy things in private, which I can't believe, he'd never express his feelings in public. Because, say it with me, Bastards are intensely private persons, If they weren't, they wouldn't be Bastard Heroes, their Bastardiness - UGH, sorry, filthy neologism there - is in their words and attitude, NOT in their actions and feelings. And Vimes is SO near to being a villain, in a sense. He always has to reign himself in, to deny himself expression of his rage. It's not by chance that his greatest victory - in Night Watch, of course - is not killing Carcer. Vimes' societal values are solid and good, his societal mores (politeness, conformity) non-existent.
And yes, I've read fanfics in which Vimes was an abusive husband or lover and others in which he was soooooooo politically correct in Disneyan lovey-dovey that I don't know which nauseated me more.
And Murakami's Yuki Eiri (see icon). Because, if fen of good writers can be shockingly blind and/or stupid, they can't hold a candle to the sheer blindness and/or stupidity of a multitude of manga and anime fen. Give them a hell of a fascinating character who happens to be a Bastard of the broody, cold, violent, insulting and sarcastic persuasion whose past trauma (I'll post all about Murakami's Gravitation ASAP) assures that he'll never be able to express his feelings because - boring innit? - he's a VERY private person. Yet his societal values are solid... I'm repeating myself amn't I? And URGH! how he's treated by fen! Abusive, sadistic lover or mushy idiot because he has to be redeemed and reformed into a Disneyan image of goody-goodiness, if he is to be good.
Let's not even dwell on poor Draco Malfoy, what's been done to him makes me weep for humanity.
In conclusion, I suspect lots of fen are repulsed by intelligence, because if there's one thing that distinguishes the Bastard Hero from the Bastard Villain is exactly intelligence as in the OED definition:
The action or fact of mentally apprehending something; understanding, knowledge, cognizance, comprehension (of something)
Intelligence makes people appreciate and espouse the basic societal values of justice, respect of others' life and rights, it doesn't necessarily make people appreciate and espouse the societal mores of politeness and conformity. Intelligence is threatening because it tends to put in discussion established mores. Intelligence allied to passion is lethal for conformity, the desire to be what I call the 'invisible burgeois'. Intelligence plus passion plus impatience does a marvellous Bastard Hero make, my favourite kind of hero, by the way, but I suppose I've shouted that from the rooftops already. A certain kind of fan - they come not single soldiers but in BATTALIONS! - is shocked and put out by the Bastard Hero and they all frantically re-write him into a one-dimensional bland nothingness that negates the richness of the character and, incidentally, all the work the author put into creating him. But who cares about complexity when we can have Disneyan shallowness and everything in black-and-white simple stupidity?
Long live all Bastard Heroes and long may they continue insulting friend and enemy alike! They have my support, at least.
PS: I wanted to add Dunnett's Lymond, but I fear![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mistful sarcasm, so I've refrained. :-D
Unnecessarily Reforming the 'Decent' Bastard
If Henry Fielding were a contemporary author and he'd written Jonathan Wild last year, tons of readers would love and adore Jonathan and proclaim him a Good Hero, because the novel proclaims it every other page, you see, and if the author tells you persistently a character is a Hero Noble and Brave, then he must surely be. (There's another can of worms with female characters which I'll explore in another post, this is way too long as it is) A few, more critically inclined readers would get that he's a criminal with no redeeming features whatsoever, but they would be screamed at by legions of fen who'd consistently quote Wild's noble words about virtue as gospel and testament to his pure heart.
Yet, as we all know, Jonathan Wild is a political satire about 'Great Men' who gain power by cheating, stealing, murdering and conniving. The 'Great Man' is a hypocrite and all his words are lies. "Judge people by what they do," Fielding says, "not by what they say."
In other words, many contemporary readers, probably beaten down by the Politically Correctedness of our times, need authorial statements to know whom to admire and whom to despise in a story and when the above are lacking the only parameter they follow is the 'virtuousness' of their lines of dialogue. A Hero must say Noble and Kind words to everyone and, if sometimes he gets righteously angry as well he may, he'll express his contempt for his enemy or rival with scathing words of Noble Outrage (like 'you loser' or 'you coward').
Literature forbid we have a hero who's also a rude bastard, how can readers (yes, yes, a lot of them NOT all of them) resolve the confusion about the character?
Well, it's easy. Thanks to the Disney School of Good Feelings and Feeling Good, readers (NOT all of them, and this is the last time I specify it. Take it as said every time) either decide the Bastard is not a Hero, after all, or they decide that he isn't really saying all those rude and insulting snarky things. Jane Austen had a wonderful career based on readers' blindness to conflicting information, after all. Shallowness as an analysis tool prescribes that there is NO subtext, nothing is ever implied and actions are not important at all. What does it matter if character A saves the world, if he's rude about it? What does it matter if character B has deep and strong feelings for character C, if he never says it?
I'm not very clear, am I? Alright, on with the examples.
Diana Wynne Jones' Christopher Chant, the Chrestomanci, is an arrogant, selfish, vain, sarcastic bastard. He's also a sort of permanent saviour of worlds who has a deep respect for justice and all societal Good Things and a deep respect, affection and love for his wife, children and friends. Does he express his feelings with loving words? Not on your life, because he's also a deeply private person - a consequence of his isolated childhood and subsequent betrayal by his mentor - one who'd die before exposing his 'weaker' feelings to rejection and ridicule; one who hides behind sarcasm and rudeness because he really thinks most people are fools who won't understand anything but assurance and brusqueness.
That is a fully realised three dimensional character, obviously, but do some readers see him as worthy of being the Hero of a Series? They are shocked by his rudeness, to them it doesn't compute. Here's an example:
... Cat's secret dread was that one day he would be there, making polite conversation, and actually see one of Gabriel's lives as it went away. If he did, he knew he would scream.
The dread of this happening so haunted Cat that he could scarcely speak to Gabriel for watching and waiting for a life to leave. Gabriel de Witt told Chrestomanci that Cat was a strange, reserved boy. To which Chrestomanci answered "Really?" in his most sarcastic way.
"How can Christopher be so mean to Cat?" some say. "How can Christopher be so mean to Gabriel?" some other, more astute readers say. "It makes Christopher not so enjoyable as a protagonist and hero," both the factions say and run off to write fanfics in which he's the personified Milk of Human Kindness and Never But Never Says an Unkind Thing to Anyone (he also says 'I love you' a hell of a lot). We can't have kindness through deeds and unsaid respect for others now, can we?
Pterry's Vimes. Yes, I'm the Queen of Obvious and am a descendant of Monsieur de Lapalisse. Deal with it. Vimes is another Bastard. He's not the arrogant, vain bastard, but the raging, violent, sarcastic (all Bastards are sarcastic, after all, it's a mark of Intelligence), selfish - yes, selfish. He really is. Selflessness isn't a healthy thing. - Bastard with a capital B. You won't catch Vimes saying "I love you, fluffybunny" to Sybil because A) Pterry's too good a writer to mire himself in sentimental nonsense and B) even if Vimes says mushy things in private, which I can't believe, he'd never express his feelings in public. Because, say it with me, Bastards are intensely private persons, If they weren't, they wouldn't be Bastard Heroes, their Bastardiness - UGH, sorry, filthy neologism there - is in their words and attitude, NOT in their actions and feelings. And Vimes is SO near to being a villain, in a sense. He always has to reign himself in, to deny himself expression of his rage. It's not by chance that his greatest victory - in Night Watch, of course - is not killing Carcer. Vimes' societal values are solid and good, his societal mores (politeness, conformity) non-existent.
And yes, I've read fanfics in which Vimes was an abusive husband or lover and others in which he was soooooooo politically correct in Disneyan lovey-dovey that I don't know which nauseated me more.
And Murakami's Yuki Eiri (see icon). Because, if fen of good writers can be shockingly blind and/or stupid, they can't hold a candle to the sheer blindness and/or stupidity of a multitude of manga and anime fen. Give them a hell of a fascinating character who happens to be a Bastard of the broody, cold, violent, insulting and sarcastic persuasion whose past trauma (I'll post all about Murakami's Gravitation ASAP) assures that he'll never be able to express his feelings because - boring innit? - he's a VERY private person. Yet his societal values are solid... I'm repeating myself amn't I? And URGH! how he's treated by fen! Abusive, sadistic lover or mushy idiot because he has to be redeemed and reformed into a Disneyan image of goody-goodiness, if he is to be good.
Let's not even dwell on poor Draco Malfoy, what's been done to him makes me weep for humanity.
In conclusion, I suspect lots of fen are repulsed by intelligence, because if there's one thing that distinguishes the Bastard Hero from the Bastard Villain is exactly intelligence as in the OED definition:
The action or fact of mentally apprehending something; understanding, knowledge, cognizance, comprehension (of something)
Intelligence makes people appreciate and espouse the basic societal values of justice, respect of others' life and rights, it doesn't necessarily make people appreciate and espouse the societal mores of politeness and conformity. Intelligence is threatening because it tends to put in discussion established mores. Intelligence allied to passion is lethal for conformity, the desire to be what I call the 'invisible burgeois'. Intelligence plus passion plus impatience does a marvellous Bastard Hero make, my favourite kind of hero, by the way, but I suppose I've shouted that from the rooftops already. A certain kind of fan - they come not single soldiers but in BATTALIONS! - is shocked and put out by the Bastard Hero and they all frantically re-write him into a one-dimensional bland nothingness that negates the richness of the character and, incidentally, all the work the author put into creating him. But who cares about complexity when we can have Disneyan shallowness and everything in black-and-white simple stupidity?
Long live all Bastard Heroes and long may they continue insulting friend and enemy alike! They have my support, at least.
PS: I wanted to add Dunnett's Lymond, but I fear
mistful sarcasm, so I've refrained. :-D
no subject
I see what you mean, and I love
And I agree with you about JKR not letting her characters live up to their potential. She is a rigid woman with very firm ideas about how everything should be - her best writing are the parts where it seems like she temporarily forgot herself and let her characters act like themselves, not like she thought they should act.
no subject
Does JKR not see the ass? I've always assumed she HAD too -- after OTP, my friend S and I decided that unless the next one had less anger, we loathed Harry and didn't want to read anymore. Fortunately, it turned out he was just being 15...
But then, (to take your side of the discussion) JKR almost certainly doesn't what quite what an arse Dumbledore is to Harry. Quite aside from the blithe realization that Harry has to die in the last battle, with only an unspoken hope that maybe D's theory is correct and Harry won't die, there's the willingness to leave him with child abusers for his entire childhood, on the grounds he won't be killed that way. Sorry, as an abused child myself, I relate to Harry and loathe D's betrayal -- how could the head of a school fool himself that starving a child, overworking him, emotionally attacking him, invalidating his parentage, locking him in a storage cupboard, and actually imprisoning him, with bars on his windows, is better than letting him have a happy life where there's a chance someone might kill him? (Omg, what a Faulknerian sentence -- except without the splendid diction.)
And to respond to flying skull in the same space (hope that's reasonable)because you're also talking about JKR's rigidity; that she can only see her own way of looking at things. I'm not ready to write her off like that -- but she'll need another series so I can see if the characters are different than this set. As to hoping you're not offending anyone -- if you meant me, by no means! I too am passionate, and therefore opinionated, about writing, and I can't imagine a better friend than one you can sit down with and tear apart a book. I miss that so much -- it's nice to drop in to your space and get a little of that,from you and your friends.
I spent a lot of time trying to teach people that you need to judge people by their actions, not by what they say. It's discouraging when writers don't understand that, because their writing is less nuanced as a result. I like nuances....
Oh gad, back to struggling with posting my first LJ story. HTML was invented by the Dark One, speaking of Bastards...
no subject
Nope. She's suffering from a rare condition known as "ass blindness." It's very tragic. =]
Seriously, ah... I think she does and she doesn't. It's something that I can't quite put into words yet, but it's got to do with JKR's very Christian worldview. It's like... we're all sinners, but once we choose to be good (turning to God, in Christianity; choosing to stand with Gryffindor and Dumbledore, in HP) our sins are forgiven.
So while everyone in the Potterverse have very glaring personal defects, the impression I'm getting is that JKR thinks they don't count in a person who has chosen the right side to stand on. In such a person, they are just "understandable human frailty" (because all humans are weak and stupid and sinful - you can't expect anything more of them). If you've chosen to be good (which is to say, to place your loyalty in Dumbledore), then all that is forgiven.
Conversedly, when someone has not chosen to be good, all his sins still count and he can be condemned for them. And if he does good things on occasion? Doesn't matter - his sins are just too many for his good deeds to count in comparison (because all humans are weak and stupid and sinful; it is impossible for anyone to be virtious on his own merit). Whereas a "forgiven" person's good deeds are significant because they are not overshadowed by his sins, which are after all made unimportant by his commitment to good.
I'm not sure if that made any sense. ^_^;;
I too am passionate, and therefore opinionated, about writing, and I can't imagine a better friend than one you can sit down with and tear apart a book.
You're going to fit in just fine around here. :D
no subject
YES! You are. Be passionate and opinionated all you wish, PLEASE.
I'm not silent on the Harry/JKR front out of a misplaced sense of fear of offending, but out of a very real sense that the level of anger this argument inspires in me can be offputting for all thinking persons, as it tends to reduce me to foaming at the mouth and not a little incoherency.
I'll be posting about that. I wanted to for a long time and DH has done nothing but reinforce the need. All about the author NEEDING to respect her/his characters for fucksake. But I need to calm down and make a coherent and civilised argument about it, or it'll be only gnashing of teeth and growling interspected with occasional random ROARING and SCREECHING. Which ain't civilised. Which I'd like to be. Y'know, civilised. :-D