A thing writers must grasp, if they're going to tell anything like a good story, is the distinction between character and characterization. Characterization is what you put on your "character fact sheet": background, station in life, appearance, personality traits. A characterization of Virginia Ruth might be: female, mid-20s, about averagely attractive, loves books above all else, generally introverted but very open and talkative when she's comfortable with friends, nonconformist but not in an ostentatious way, works at a hospital to support her novel-writing habit. Et cetera. If you've ever done one of those "character sheets" for fiction writers, with pages and pages of details about your character's history, personality, likes and dislikes, etc... that's characterization.
Character is something very different. Character is nothing more nor less than what your character does throughout the action of the story. Character confirms, or gives the lie to, the facts of your characterization. Sometimes you can make the two things play against each other affectively: if Tom Silvertongue is a lawyer (and therefore, one would assume, fairly assertive and well-spoken), but stutters and backs away from any conflict, that's kind of interesting. If he's a very successful lawyer in spite of that, it's very interesting... provided the writer shows both how he defies the lawyer stereotype, and how he succeeds in spite of it.
A writer has got to maintain the integrity of his or her characters. If you say Sally Sharpeyes is observant and perceptive, but she routinely picks up on things only several chapters after the audience has spotted them, then she's a bad character. Reading the forums run by two of my favorite storytellers, Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio, I came across a discussion on that big three-way swordfight in the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie. One of the readers was asking why, to make the plot smoother, Captain Jack (or possibly Norrington) didn't just knock Will out of the fight at one point. Ted and Terry's response: "That would violate Will's character." Will is supposed to be the best swordsman in the story, and they had to maintain his character in each fight.
Characterization doesn't count unless it's backed up by character. It just doesn't. The audience doesn't care what's on your fact sheet. They care what the character does in the course of the story. I challenge you to name any character you hate, and I bet it'll be for one of three reasons: 1) they do mean, mean things to your favorite character; 2) they're obnoxious, and meant to be, 3) the writer didn't back up the characterization.
Which brings me to feminism. I've been trying for a while now to express why I'm so dissatisfied with female characters in most mainstream movies these days. It seems to me that Golden-Age Hollywood, the age of Katharine Hepburn and Ingrid Bergman, produced many more strong female characters. Why, in an era where women can be doctors and lawyers and soldiers and scientists, are women in the movies so insipid? It's not because the movie characters aren't doctors, etc... A lot of them are. You couldn't make a movie where are the women are housewives, nurses, and teachers, unless you were being deliberately ironic about it. No, the problem is that while characterizations for women have gotten stronger, characters have gotten much weaker. You don't see female characters making tough decisions, you don't see them doing things that are integral to the plot. I should say, you don't see young, attractive female characters doing these things. There are a few exceptions, but not nearly enough.
I don't know why this is. I could speculate, but I think that's best left for another post. Or the comments section... then you could speculate along with me!
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4 comments:
awesome, instructive post. I'm glad you wrote about character / characterization. I hadn't ever thought about that. I bet your writing world brings so much to your reading world (and, of course, the opposite is true, too). I have some instantaneous thoughts on what you wrote about female characters in movie, but I'm going to let them these thoughts brew before I respond.
-leah
I was just checking out imdb, and the happy movie links at the bottom of the homepage. I read a guy's list of characters from the last twenty years who he considered best. When he got to Tracy Flick from Election, he wrote in his comments that he'd just noticed she was the only female on the list and wondered why. He could think of other good female characters, but she was the only one he could put on the level of Gollum and Jack Sparrow and Hannibal Lecter. I realized I couldn't do much better than him without leaving Hollywood for Japan. I could think of some good characters who were female but somehow didn't fit his list. I notice that for all his characters that I recognized, there was a duality to them. By duality I mean at the center of their character is a balancing act between two opposite extremes. I can't think of many Western female characters like that.
This is highly belatedly, but hey, that's the Ninja for ya.
Either way, I think the reason for weaker characters in stories could be a few reasons. One is simply bad writing. Stereotypes for characters will always be there. The 'boy becoming a man', the 'damsel in distress', and the 'cowardly sidekick' are just a few examples. I think for men that are supposed to be more emotionally detached, they seem merely shallow and one sided. Women, who are supposed to be more open with emotion than their male counterparts, get put in a worse light because they are showing more of their character... Which if there is bad writing, merely exposing their limitations as characters more so than the strong silent types (which can be women too, but those aren't likely the people you are annoyed at).
The second reason I can think of is the idea of a feminine woman, which is sometimes protrayed as weakness. It is true that men like being considered heroic and like saving the day... It makes them feel more mascline and for some women, the idea of having someone rescue them is one they enjoy.
Anyway, just my inital thoughts on the subject.
- James of the Ninja-ing type.
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