(Image Property of LucasFilm/Disney)
Has anyone ever disappointed you? Has anyone ever done something that just left you dumbfounded and let down?
Maybe they did something that made you step back and say, “I’m not sure I really know who you are anymore.”
It’s a harsh reality to get smacked in the face by disappointment, when our heroes let us down or when people close to us don’t live up to the lofty bronze statues we’ve constructed of them in our minds.
It’s even harder when that person is fictional.
(No, it really isn’t, but just go with it, okay?)
What happens when a real person disappoints you? What happens when a real person lets you down?
Well, you have two possible responses: You can choose forgiveness or holding a grudge. You can let go of that disappointment and try to love them through it, or you can hold a grudge and let that person’s failure become your failure.
That’s deep, I know.
With fictional disappointment, though, you have a third option. You can always just pretend that it didn’t happen.
Sadly, this is the option that most people take to when they read a book or watch a movie where a character does something that runs contrary to their own expectations. I remember one of my favorite former teachers telling me that her students had read Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and denied the main character’s actions. They just decided that the protagonist “wouldn’t do that.”
In their mind, no woman would act the way that Chopin’s heroine did.
Admittedly, I’m not a huge fan of that book. You can’t deny the artistic merit of it, but I don’t care for it. Part of my disdain for The Awakening probably stems from the class I took in college where I had to read that book and write eight different papers on it over the course of a single semester. That being said, I also won’t deny the character’s actions. In the world of that novel, she did those things. Too bad. So sad. Deal with it, Cupcake.
A lot of people had the same reaction to Luke Skywalker’s character in Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi. They felt like director/writer Rian Johnson “ruined” Skywalker by posing him as this brooding, sullen figure who had abandoned the Force and who had no interest in helping the Rebellion…I mean, the Resistance…stop Kylo Ren and Snoke.
Oh, I’ve already made my feelings known. On the hood of Rian Johnson’s car. (Photo by Егор Камелев on Unsplash)
People kept saying that Luke “wouldn’t do that!” They felt like Luke was still this idealistic kid who we had last seen 30 years ago in Return of the Jedi and that he would never change. Ever. For anything.
There’s a literary term for that, though. We call those figures static characters.
Static characters don’t change. They stay the same throughout the whole time we follow them without any major changes in personality or perspective.
In a short work, for a minor character, a static character isn’t so bad. You need static characters to ground a story. However, your protagonists really probably shouldn’t be too static. There needs to be some change. There should, of course, be some core elements of a character that remain true as their “guiding principles,” perhaps, but even those are subject to change in a drastic enough environment.
I hate to break it to you, but Luke isn’t even a static character in one movie. His perspective on the “world” around him changes quite a bit from the beginning of Star Wars IV: A New Hope to the end, going from simple farm boy who is begging to leave home before becoming a star pilot who has to embrace his new life. Even in the small changes, though, he still has this eagerness and this youthful exuberance to him.
By the end of the original trilogy, Luke has already soured a little bit. He’s more sullen, even in his hope. There are some very real signs of conflict within him as he struggles to adapt to all this new information he’s had to absorb.
Luke is a dynamic character. We see some changes in him as he ages, going from the quick-tempered flyboy he started out as to the somber, calculating Jedi he becomes.
But 30 years later, that’s suddenly not okay? We expect him to still be that unchanged Jedi we first saw all that time ago? Rian Johnson has somehow given us one of the best characterizations we’ve ever seen in long-form storytelling. Admittedly, there aren’t many franchises or films where this type of reintroduction could occur, but I think Johnson handles it brilliantly by reintroducing an aged, changed Luke Skywalker to us who has obviously had to handle some difficult times.
At the same time, so many Star Wars fans got so bogged down in “sullen Luke’s” initial appearance that they don’t even let themselves enjoy the dynamic, redemptive moment at the end of the movie. They robbed themselves of what should be one of Luke’s greatest triumphs.
That’s not really my main point, though. My point is that audiences and consumers of media are too quick to deny a character’s actions, but that’s not how characterization works.
Instead of seeing those actions as flawed writing that can’t possibly be real, why don’t we instead stop and examine what those actions mean for a character? Why would they choose to do this thing that is so wholly incongruous to what we know of them so far?
There’s a quote by Maya Angelou that has been floating around for a few months, generally in the context of politics and bad people, that I think has some weight for this topic.
When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. - Maya Angelou
When a real, flesh-and-blood human does something that surprises us, either for better or worse, we don’t really question the veracity of that action. Normally. We usually accept that it happened and then change our perception of that person accordingly.
Sometimes we even examine the circumstances that might have led this person to act in such a way.
But when fictional characters do something that seems off to us, we are far too quick to call foul and say, “Didn’t happen!” While that’s technically true, it didn’t really happen because it’s a work of fiction, the thing that’s written down has to be taken as true in that world.
If we argue with who characters are too much, then there’s no point in even consuming media in the first place.
The term for “official stories” nowadays is canon. For something to be canon, it has to be accepted as the real, actual way the story happened. That’s interesting when you consider what the term canonization actually refers to.
Canonization is the process by which books of the Bible were deemed holy and verified. You may or may not know this, but there are far more than 66 pieces of writing in the world that pertain to God, Jesus, and elements of the Christian religion. For various reasons, most of them are not accepted as canon.
Now, most of those pieces of writing have zero business being considered canon. There’s no serious debate about most of them because they either came about far too late to be real and authoritative, or there are some serious, obvious flaws in the accuracy of such documents, but that’s not the point.
Now if you wanna talk holy… (Image property of Netflix/Arrested Development)
My point is that if something is canon, then it’s “holy.” It happened and we can’t disagree with the fictional reality of it. The person or people responsible for those characters and story deemed that this is the new reality. Our first response, as an audience and as consumers of media, must be to examine what those actions say about the character, not whether or not they happened.
Now I will grant two huge caveats here. First of all, if something is non-canonical, then go for it. You can judge and doubt fan-fiction all you want because, by definition, it isn’t canon. A big part of fan-fiction, if that fiction is trying to be true to canon, is whether or not it follows reasonably close to the established reality.
The second caveat is the one that many Star Wars fans will latch on to, and that’s this: You can argue that these decisions are examples of bad writing. Just because an author has decided what a character’s actions are, that doesn’t mean they are a good writer.
Much of what we deem quality literature in our established canon is because we believe that the characters and their actions teach us something about humanity. The only thing that bad writing teaches us about humanity is that some people really shouldn’t follow their dreams.
I’m not entirely unsympathetic to those who disliked Johnson’s interpretation of Luke Skywalker, nor am I unsympathetic to those who disagree with Chopin’s take on femininity in the late 19th century. I’m also not entirely unsympathetic to those who struggle to follow the logical track of double negatives, but I will still torment you on occasion just because I can.
When it comes to the philosophy of a work or the skill of the creator, those are debates we can certainly have. And, if you are so inclined, you can choose to argue that their portrayals of certain characters are not true to life.
But characterization doesn’t lie. Perhaps you just don’t know a character as well as you think you do. It may be bad characterization, it may reveal things about a character that you don’t like or understand. Either way, it doesn’t lie.
“So they put another time machine inside the first time machine, and then they…what? Ugh.” (Photo by Hermes Rivera on Unsplash)
Unless the character is lying, like if they’re a spy or something. Or if there’s time travel involved, but that’s just a whole headache of other narrative problems that I just don’t feel like getting into.
You’re on your own, there.