Reel Heroes & Villains

[RJDiogenes]

Well, I've just finished reading the first part of scotty's new book, Reel Heroes & Villains, which covers the new taxonomy, and I have a few thoughts. I'll probably have more when I digest it more thoroughly, but these are my initial reactions.

It's very thorough, and certainly very thought provoking-- it took me this long to read it because pretty much every paragraph sets my mind off on some bit of contemplation, looking for examples, looking for exceptions, considering how my own fiction fits in, cooking up new ideas inspired by the insights in the individual categories, cooking up new ideas to subversively undermine the insights in the individual categories, and wondering if my own categorization would look the same.

While I like the broad structure of the taxonomy, there were a few details that I don't think I agree with at first consideration:

The inclusion of "Self" under the "Single" category seemed out of place, because it is more a type of conflict than a type of character. The taxonomy didn't really deal with types of conflicts, although "Nature" was included in the "System" section. This also seemed a bit awkward, although less so, because nature can be the equivalent of a character in a story.

In the "Duo" section, I question the use of separate categories for "Buddy Duos" and "Romantic Duos," and possibly the "Hero and Sidekick" and "Mastermind and Henchman." It seems to me that there are any number of configurations for "Buddy Duos" and separate category for "Romantic Duos" is arbitrary. "Buddy Duos" can be two friends, like Starsky & Hutch, or two siblings, like on Supernatural, or a married couple, like on Hart To Hart, or an evolving-relationship couple, like on Bones, or any other pairing of two people (and contemplating all the possible pairings that could possibly be turned into a story was one of those distractions that I mentioned above). I can more understand carving out the "Hero and Sidekick"/"Mastermind and Henchman," because these are not equal partners-- but they are also mirror versions of the same concept. So perhaps it would be better to boil these down to two categories: "Equal Duo" and "Unequal Duo" (except with better names).

In the "Ensemble" category, I question the use of the "Fraternity/Sorority" category, since its only distinguishing feature seems to be incompetence or immaturity, and a quality standard, so to speak, was not applied to any other category in the taxonomy. I haven't fully thought this one through yet, but my initial reaction is that, in addition to "Family," there should be two categories along the lines of "Official" (police, military, espionage, etc.) and "Unofficial" (fraternities and sororities would fit here, along with the schools themselves, as well as organizations like private detective agencies, clubs, or more informal groups).

In the "System" section, I question the "Institution" section, since it seems to exist only for the sake of prejudicial obstacles like racism or sexism. The "Government" section seems limited as well. Neither category seems to embrace the full breadth of what us Hippies call the establishment. Perhaps one category, simply labeled "Society." I'm not sure yet if "Organization" should be a separate category or not. I suppose, in the sense that it represents a private rather than public system, it should be.

My last thought, for the moment, is on the inclusion of "Episodic" characters. I'm not sure whether this should be broadened or simply folded into "Catalytic." This section implies that "Episodic" characters are a new phenomenon, or at least that the ubiquitousness is new. In fact, these types of characters have always been prevalent. In modern history, there is everyone from Sherlock Holmes to Tarzan to Flash Gordon to the Shadow and a million other Pulp characters to a near infinite amount of TV series characters and Comic Book characters. And going further back in history, there are many folkloric and mythological characters who had many an episodic adventure, from Hercules to Odysseus; in fact, all the way back to Gilgamesh. Sometimes they do experience some form of transformation in their origin story, like Spider-Man or Doctor Strange, but just as often they simply are who they are.

[scottydog]

^^ Great comments, RJ!

You obviously put a lot of thought and care into these observations, and I'm forwarding them to Greg (my henchman) for us both to consider. My initial thought (and that's all I can have this early in the morning) is that you've done a great job of seeing "the bigger picture" with regard to the categories we've created, finding commonalities among some of our micro-categories that we didn't see. For example, "society" is a nice way of summing up the "isms" of institution, system, and other forces opposing the hero. Moreover, the "equal" vs. "nonequal" distinction among Duos is a nice, sweeping summary of what we mean to say.

I'll give you more responses after I have time to more thoroughly ponder your thoughts. I'll encourage Greg to sign up for RenNext, too -- he's a smart, quirky person like many of us here.

Thanks so much, RJ. More later.....

[Lupine]

I'll try to read the book later today and comment.

[RJDiogenes]

^^ Great comments, RJ!

Thanks. I'm going to read through again and see how it feels now that I'm familiar with the entire structure.

I'll encourage Greg to sign up for RenNext, too -- he's a smart, quirky person like many of us here.

That would be fantastic. I've got registration closed at the moment (since I was spending a half hour a day deleting Bots), so let me know when he wants to join and what username so I can open things up and keep an eye peeled for him.

[scottydog]

I'm going to read through again and see how it feels now that I'm familiar with the entire structure.

We know it needs work, and your comments (and Lupy's no doubt) will be a big help to us when we refine it in our next book. So again, I'm really grateful.

[RJDiogenes]

I try to be useful, if possible.

[Lupine]

Some thoughts I had, mostly on number 3:

On a very mind technical note, I wouldn't group Robin Hood in as a Lone hero as he has his Merry Men, specifically Little John. I'm not sure I'd group "Self" in this as it's more of a psychological category than if a hero/villain is alone or not. I'd put "Hero and Sidekick" and "Mastermind and Henchman" into one group. With 6.3 I think I'd break it down to only "Ensemble" and "Team". “Ensemble” being a group of people who may not be striving as a unit towards a unified goal (like Family, Fraternity/Sorority- though not necessarily). “Team” obviously being a coherent force with single goals (like Police/Military and superhero teams- though again not necessarily).

More thoughts later.

[RJDiogenes]

Good point about Robin Hood.

That reminds me of something I meant to post. The "Deceptive" category was mostly applicable to villains, but I did think of one hero who would fall into that category: The Green Hornet always pretended to be a criminal while fighting crime.

[Lupine]

^Also the IM Force from Mission: Impossible.

[RJDiogenes]

Good one. It's an interesting theme. I wonder how many heroes actually pretended to be bad guys.

[Lupine]

A lot of police genres have people going undercover as felons. So I guess it's fairly common.

[RJDiogenes]

I thought about that, but I'm talking about characters where "deception" is part of the modus operandi. The Green Hornet's gimmick was that everybody, cops and criminals alike, thought he was a criminal.

Although, I suppose you could say that any character with a secret identity is deceptive, which would indeed make it far more common.

[scottydog]

Great points, guys. All of them. We hadn't thought about the good guys being deceptive, only the bad guys. That may be the general rule but you've pointed out fascinating exceptions.

Sometimes it's tough to tell whether a story is centered on a lone hero or a group of heroes. Robin Hood is a great example -- he's clearly the star of the show, the leader who gets most of the screen time. But he's also clearly the leader of a team of people So is this a lone hero story or an ensemble hero story?

I suspect this relates to RJ's distinction between equality and inequality in multi-person hero entities. Buddy heroes are equal, but hero-sidekicks are not. Let's expand this to group settings -- if Robin Hood is the leader of his merry men, then we have an unequal ensemble. The equal ensemble would be the John Hughes' Breakfast Club scenario where all the kids in detention had equal billing.

So you could argue that in an equal ensemble, like Breakfast Club, there can be no Lone Hero because everyone probably gets equal attention, but in unequal ensembles, the head person could be considered a lone hero because the story is likely focusing on him/her.

In the end, this is all very subjective.

[RJDiogenes]

Perhaps you could allow for multiple sidekicks, which would be different from an ensemble.

What do you call those diagrams with the overlapping circles? Maybe each character could be described by one of those, since it's possible to be in more than one category. Robin Hood may be a lone hero with multiple sidekicks who is also an anti-hero, since he is an outlaw.

[scottydog]

Venn diagrams. An interesting thought. I would love to find a way to visually depict what's going on.