Today is a special day. One of my best friends in the world is getting married (congratulations, Casey and Nicole!), and I am in the wedding. Because of that, timing issues, and the fact that someone once told me that brevity is the soul of wit, I give you your daily dose of Zen:
Thanks to In One Ear… for the link.
Every story is about someone, one particular character without whom the story could simply not be told.
Every time we pick up a book or watch a movie, we are investing in this single character. It might be the main character; it usually is. We follow them as spectators through their adventures, trials, and journeys, and our reward is (generally) good solid storytelling with a smidge of catharsis or vicarious thrillage.
But sometimes, the protagonists just don’t have that “oomph.” There’s no pizzazz or depth to them. While they’re interesting enough to read or watch for a while, they are not the ones driving the action; they are simply being driven by it.
To me, the very best stories are those that tell the story of someone who is not the main character. The very best stories are those whose lynchpin does not stand centerstage, whose keystone might not be in the center of the narrative arch.
“Why?” you ask.
I answer you: “I’m not sure.”
What’s even more confuzzling is how I can read some books and watch some shows/films and still have no idea whose story I am being told. It’s like the main character is not deep enough to really fulfill my innate need for narrative cohesion.
This summer, my wife and I are presenting papers at Slayage in St. Augustine, Florida. For those of you unaware, Slayage is a biennial national academic conference dealing with any and all of the Whedonverses.
Jennifer presented there in 2008, while this is my first go-round. To say that I’m excited would be fairly understated. I mean, for us Whedon nerds, this is the place to spend a few days when it comes around every couple of years.
Since the conference schedule was just recently posted, I thought I would share a little of what kind of research we’re doing and what’s going on our little corner of Joss Whedon scholarship these days.
Back when this blog was new and I had no idea if people would even bother reading it, I wrote about my use of Joss Whedon’s Firefly in my Basic Writing II classes. With the new semester finally under way, I figure a similar post is in order to explain my newest attempt at emboldening the English classroom: Stephen King and Buffy: The Vampire Slayer.
Over the summer, I taught my first Freshman Comp course. I started using Stephen King’s “Autopsy Room Four” as a way to get students to realize how effective descriptive writing can be. Later in the course, I used the TV adaptation of the story that appeared in the miniseries Nightmares and Dreamscapes to write a compare/contrast essay.
For all my high hopes, I consider that attempt a failure. I blame not myself, however, but the incredibly condensed nature of a four-week long writing course, on top of having a (mostly) uninterested roster. (I will go on the record here that four weeks is an absurdly short amount of time to try to teach someone the fundamentals of academic writing; one cannot even begin to revise effectively in four weeks.) That being said, however, I think that there was a lot more pushing I could have done to really implement it into my class.
With the Fall semester starting, that’s just what I intend to do. I have the time to actually dig into Stephen King’s writing, how he writes, why he writes, and why I think “Autopsy Room Four” is the perfect way to introduce descriptive narration to a potentially resistant audience. I didn’t have much flexibility in the four week July session.
For people who aren’t familiar with the story, “Autopsy Room Four’s” basic premise is this: Howard wakes up on an autopsy table, completely alive, but unable to communicate that to the people who are about to carve him up.
It’s not the most exciting story in the world, but given that it’s told in first-person and the main character can only describe to the reader what he experience through his senses other than sight, I think there’s a lot of worth in the writing.
I think this series of assignments will also give my students the chance to deal with cross-genre writing. They’ll be looking at a piece of fiction and learning to take the writing style into consideration rather than the story itself, which promotes critical thinking. They’ll (hopefully) be applying the lessons they learn from King’s fiction style to their own non-fiction “snapshot description” essay assignment. By merging a style that is used most often in fiction into early non-fiction in the class, I hope the students can see that everything has a place in academia, not just the overdone, stuffy “classics” they tune out whenever they’re assigned.
On the other side of my schedule, I have, for the first time, a Basic Writing I course. It is the most fundamental of our college’s English offerings. It’s meant to help those with little to no proficiency in the language start to bridge their way into college-level academic writing. We start small, parsing sentences, and eventually move into paragraphs and short essays. One of my favorite developmental assignments is a summary essay. It doesn’t require the student to spend much time on actually coming up with material or critically dissecting somethiing, allowing them to concentrate on mechanics and writing style.
My summary assignment for English 099 is based around the pilot episode of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, “Welcome to the Hellmouth.” I will admit, part of the reason I threw Buffy onto my syllabus was to have an awesome piece of Whedon make up both halves of my Basic Writing sequence. That, and I’m preparing to submit a proposal to next year’s Slayage Conference, so I have to keep myself in a Whedon mood somehow.
Buffy is easy enough to delve into that I think the pilot will be accessible to even those students who resist the assignment, much like why I chose Firefly initially. The first season of Buffy is far from complex, and “Welcome to the Hellmouth” does a pretty decent job of making the world known to any viewers lucky enough to not have ever seen the film. Since the assignment is a simple one-page summary, the students will not have to understand and regurgitate the intricacies of the world or the character dynamics; they will just be able to concentrate on what the show is.
I also feel that contemporary literature and television is a good way to introduce these students to college English. Many come into college with Ivory Tower expectations, and that’s just not where higher education is anymore. Pop culture is slowly working its way into the curriculum, and I am doing my part to help. By integrating shows like Buffy and authors like Stephen King into my syllabus instead of “classics,” I think I can eventually reach resistant students and let them see that college and learning is not always about esoteric elitism.
The reason I am sitting here today is because my freshman comp classes used graphic novels as texts. Dr. Carl Buchanan introduced me to a world that I really thought was limited to—for lack of a better term—dead white guys. I hope I can be that teacher to at least one student. Helping students see the value in art they might not have ever considered art is one of my major goals. I think I’m well on my way to achieving it.
I have read all seven Harry Potter books, seen all five movies, and I look forward to the theme park being built in
I’m Beej, and I’m a hero hater.
I don’t know what it is, but I since I was young, I’ve always had a hard time rooting for the characters I was supposed to root for. I always liked the idea of the bad guy winning. I used to read comic books not for the heroes, but for the villains. I have always liked Venom better than Spider-man (well, maybe not always; he was a stinker in Spider-man 3). I watched Saw when it was new and exciting. When Jigsaw won at the end, I was giddy. The spoiled, alternate ending for Terminator: Salvation made me happy because it was beautiful irony that the bad guys would be leading the good guys. What got me reading comic books in the first place was my hearing about Superman being killed. I was mad when he came back to life because I had watched him die. I had hoped since Chamber of Secrets that Harry Potter would be killed. Words can’t describe the nerdrage I felt when Harry came back to life to defeat Voldemort. I felt cheated rather than exalted.
So what is it about a hero that is so antithetical to my enjoyment? I think I’ve narrowed the problem down to mainly being the hero archetype getting the credit for being special when there is very rarely a conflict overcome by the hero’s talents alone. The hero often has his or her boon companion or ensemble of friends that is often as equally skilled, if not more so, than the hero. And still it is the hero who gets all the credit for being special. I have never thought this is fair, so in my own way, I rebelled and started rooting for the other side.
The first example that comes to mind is Harry Potter. Sure, Harry is a nice enough kid, but he’s really nothing special. The only thing that makes him special is that he has part of an evil wizard’s soul inside him. He never solves anything on his own. Either Hermione or Ron or Neville or Dumbledore or someone else bails him out of his jam, and he’s hailed as being the chosen one. Why? Because he’s the one who the bad guys gun for. He’s the one in the spotlight. And it’s not fair to his friends to be consistently overshadowed when they’re the ones doing the work, specifically Hermione. She researches for him and finds out how to overcome most of his conflicts, but she sometimes gets treated by those around her as an overachieving nuisance, even though she is the one who does the legwork while Harry keeps all eyes on him. Not to mention that without Dumbledore’s guidance, Harry would have been dead long before Voldemort came to Hogwarts. Dumbledore oversteps his implied role as Harry’s mentor and becomes his companion and protector. If not for Dumbledore, Harry would have died in Chamber. If not for Hermoine, Harry would have died in…well, all seven books! And if not for Neville Longbottom, even, he would have died in Goblet of Fire, yet all of these characters play second-fiddle to Harry Potter’s predestination to be the hero, even when he is hardly qualified for such a role. He has a good heart, but, let me be honest, the kid’s a wiener.
In Buffy Summers’ case, she does her part to slay the vampires, and she makes a ton of sacrifices to do things herself, but she consistently whines and complains about everything that she has to take care of alone. And yet, she is not alone. She has the Scoobies. Again, she is the one all the bad guys gun for, but when push comes to shove, she has the support of
Aside from all this, I just find villainy to be more interesting. I think there is something in me that prefers the darker elements of characterization over the lighter. I have always been a Batman over Superman guy. Batman’s darker, do-what-it-takes attitude always seems more pertinent than Superman’s All-American Boy Scout shtick. Maybe it’s the pessimist in me that sees more to relate to in darker characters, anti-heroes, and villains, but there seems to be something more real about them than those characters who are always defined solely by their positive attributes.
I like to think I’m a nice guy, a good guy, but when reading or watching TV, I always think of “good” characters and most heroes as being clichéd and boring. There are only so many knights in shining armor I can read about and see on the screen before I start wondering what their deal is. There rarely seems to be anything underneath the surface of these kinds of characters, no real depth. Obviously exceptions exist, but heroes are generally all good and loyal and trustworthy because they’re heroes.
It’s the villains who traditionally break out of the prescribed molds and bring something new and interesting to the viewer/reader, and if it’s not the villain who brings excitement, it is the hero’s companions. The hero’s role mostly lies in simply being the hero and living up to that expectation, while the rest of the world is set for novelty and intrigue. It’s almost as though literature, television, and film require a hero who is generic in some way to allow more in-depth experimentation with characters in the supporting cast and ensemble.
Maybe one day, I’ll find a hero that I really like. Until then, I’ll continue to read novels and watch movies where I root for the villain or love the supporting cast more than the title character. I’ll love stories about anti-heroes and avoid those about the too-good hero. I’ll loathe Harry Potter’s resurrection, and I will look forward to Buffy Summers maturation. I like reading about Luke Skywalker’s ascent to Jedi Grand Mastership in the novels, but the movies make it hard for me to relate to him. I will give Willow and Xander and Hermione and Neville the billing they deserve when perhaps few others will. And I will always love when Batman outdoes Superman because he is willing to do whatever it takes to swing the odds to his side. And it’s not just because that’s how they write it, either.
Twitter
Email
Facebook
GoodReads
RSS