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Posts tagged as “Heroes”

Mythic structures and hero psychology

Mythic structures and hero psychology

It has been some time now since my last book checkup and since then I have found other interesting books.

This post will primarily focus, as the title says, on so-called “mythic structures” as well as “hero analysis” and the psychology of characters.
Why this specific theme you ask? Well for starters I like reading/studying/talking about the human nature and specifically heroes/villains and other tragedy-based structures (what a previous post hinted at).
I also believe that to make something “new” you have to make it with some “old” (Faire du neuf avec du vieux as we say in French). What we call “original” is only a mixture so dense of things that we can’t pin-point where it’s coming from and/or what has inspired it.
For instance in storylines, Lost has put a “new” spin on time-travel (or at the very least made it hype) but stories about time-travel has been around for centuries.

Beyond the content is probably something greater: structure.

Structure has been analysed for centuries, even millenniums, way back when Homer wrote (or rather told) his Iliad.
In the last decades, this analysis has been transposed to scripts and screenplays. Scripts and movies were broken down and compared to other literary pieces to try to found out the common links, not the least of which being Robert McKee’s Story.
Besides script acts, and structures, “heroes arcs” and “heroes journeys” have been analysed and also broken down. These mythical archetypes lead obviously to mythic structures.
This is one of the specialties of mythologists, including Joseph Campbell.
Campbell wrote a fascinating book around his theories of the journey of archetypal heroes in various mythologies from around the globe. This book led to a memo written by Christopher Vogler (a development exec) to Disney studios about how to use Campbell’s book for screenwriting. This memo led to various critically-acclaimed movies Disney movies such as The Beauty and the Beast, Aladin and The Lion King. Vogler also worked on a small movie called Fight Club.
Soon after, Christopher Vogler expanded his memo and published a book around it where he explored not only Campbell’s work (and Jung’s) but expanded it to correlate directly to screenwriting.

Vices, virtues and dilemmas should also not be forgotten in the world of screenwriting. Identifying the “moral premise” behind a story is essential to understanding why this particular story touches us, affects us. It is also what will ultimately give dimension and consistency to a great story. Few books deal with this in direct correlation with screenwriting. The Moral Premise by Stanley D Williams appears to be right on target by clearly and easily linking past and present stories, both in theory and practice.

On the other side of mythical stories and structures we have what is inside the character’s head, the character’s psychology. A lot of books have been written on the subject but few aimed at screenwriters. William Indick’s Psychology for Screenwriters seems to be one of the only books I have come across dealing exclusively with this. Comprehending the psyche of your characters can only benefit your writing and your story, especially in the television medium where characters are the medium.

You're leaking coolant at an alarming rate

While we’re on the Wired subject, or not, as well as Internet, here is another small article about leaked pilots on the Interweb.
What interested me in this article is that, as usual, the people behind the article like to hide behind “torrent-tracking sites” to speak of illegal file sharing, when it’s obvious that they have, like all of us, downloaded shows at least once in their lives. After all, the article is from Wired!
I mean if you go to any torrent website, you’ve known damn well for over a month now that pilots, like Fringe, have been leaked; hell, there’s even some talk that J.J. himself leaked the pilot!
“The number of leaked pilots and shows is always increasing”
Thank you mister obvious. I don’t need a torrent expert to tell me that, I’ll just open my eyes.
Let’s not pretend that we’re all good little boy scouts that have never ever illegally downloaded something and also never heard of torrent websites.
Yes, “society” (and suits) frown upon downloading but if you go download illegal stuff on the net, at least have the guts to admit it instead of pretending you don’t know pilots have been leaked for over a month.

And also, let’s be honest, if it was not for pirating and Internet, Lost and Heroes would not have been huge phenomenon.
Last year, months before TF1 premiered Heroes in France, there was something called the Heroes World Tour, where the cast travelled through several cities to promote the show.
One of those stop was Paris.
I wanted to meet Jack Coleman and I knew that Heroes was very popular here in France. Keep in mind that the HWT was months before the show even premiered for the first time ever on French TV. Despite that, hundreds (if not thousands?) of people formed a giant queue in front of where the cast was supposed to show up. Long story short, I unfortunately was not able to meet Coleman (too much people in line, despite me having arrived with friends at 8AM – the signing was during the evening).
Obviously everyone of them had downloaded and watched the show beforehand.

So yes, downloading greatly helps a show nowadays and helps build its reputation.
Let’s face the future and acknowledge that the illegal leaking of shows helps build a fanbase instead of destroying one.

The Dark Hero

The Dark Hero

I finally saw last night The Dark Knight.

I had not a lot to do yesterday actually.
I went to that American bookstore. I was disapointed by the small choice of books they had. W.H. Smith is so much better if you ever need an anglophone bookstore in Paris.
I bought a book I’ve been wanting to read for a long time now, The Road by Cormy McCarthy (you know, the guy that wrote No Country for Old Men).
I went over to the movie theatre to see when TDK was showing… I had 2 hours to kill.
Long story short I came back to the theatre over an hour before TDK was supposed to be shown. I bought my ticket (7 euros/11 dollars, ouch) and waited in front of the movie theatre. 20 minutes later, a dozen of people had already morphed into somewhat of a queue in front of the movie theatre. We were fortunately allowed to wait inside. Half an hour later, the queue had grown to over 200 people.
It should be noted that TDK just came out yesterday here in France.
I think there were even more people waiting to see a “normal” screening of TDK than there was for the premiere of Cloverfield I went to the day before it came out!

I came out of the theatre ecstatic.
It was amazing!

But why I am talking about that now?
Well for once because I might become amnesiac.
And more importantly because, yet again, it got me thinking. Yes, I think about stuff, deal with it.

It especially got me thinking about a post I read a while back about (super)heroes and their flaws.
I believe TDK correlates directly to that idea, especially for both Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent.
To make a hero believable, we need him/her to be flawed. We need him/her to have limits. We need him/her to be vincible.
Bruce Wayne is a human that becomes a vigilante at night. But he is still a human behind his (too-much-technologically-advanced) suit. This is reminded to us early on in the movie when he is bit by a rottweiler (physical failing).

What is interesting to see is that Bruce Wayne can be faillible as a human (at least to the audience) but Batman, the facade, must be invincible. The emotional failing that is Rachel towards Bruce Wayne is absent in Batman (I’m talking here in the POV of the Gotham people, not the audience), to avoid an obvious correlation between the two, and therefore Batman’s identity being revealed. The Joker quickly finds the emotional weak spot of Batman/Wayne and exploits it brilliantly when he forces Batman/Wayne to make a choice between the woman he loves (Rachel) or “a greater good” (Dent). Knowing that Batman/Wayne will choose Rachel instead of Dent, the Joker “mixes up” the address, leading Batman/Wayne to save Dent (the Joker’s “Ace”).
The hero ultimately overcomes his personal failures and realizes that the facade must become a scapegoat in order for the legacy of Dent to continue. This realisation incidently is induced by Lucius Fox’s comments (in the role of the mentor).
On the other hand, we have Harvey Dent. Unlike the “superhero”, he doesn’t overcome his flaws and therefore becomes a villain. Like Bruce Wayne, this white knight has problems of his own; after all, he is also human. He is a hero to Gotham City as well as Batman’s glimmer of hope for a normal life, but his nobleness is actually a facade as well, as he is easily manipulated towards his other flaw (besides Rachel), that is “the luck of the draw”. Like Batman, he relies on what he believes in, although when what he loves is taken away from him, unlike Batman, he goes beyond his values and is consumed by vengeance, therefore becoming what he was fighting against all along.

Examples of flawed heroes (and therefore believable heroes) can be found now everywhere in fiction:
Tony Stark must overcome his physical problems to become what he wants to be.
The next volume of Heroes, Villains, will most likely delve into the dark side of some of the heroes.
The James Bond franchise successfully reinvented itself by giving Bond real flaws that could be really exploited by his ennemies. This will be directly seen in the next Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, when Bond, for the first time impacted by the events that have transpired in the previous movie, goes in a blood-filled quest for vengeance (the trailer says it all).
Buffy “The Slayer” Summers is also a faillible hero that goes to “dark places” in seasons 5 and 6.
Willow Rosenberg can be compared to Harvey Dent, especially at the end of season 6. When they both lost their loved ones, they both went to the only refuge and haven that was left for them: magic for one, luck for the other.

In a realistic setting, the line between a hero and a villain is ultimately a small one. A flawed hero can easily be tempted to “cross the line”.
Those flaws is what helps us identify to our heroes.