Five Canons Better Than Any Single Character

[selenak]

This week's fannish5 wants to know about five characters who are too good for their canon, who are the only thing to make an otherwise dreadful canon (book, film, tv) palpable. And that is one of my anti-concepts, anti-kinks, whatever you want to call it. It's not that I don't have canons where I love one character more than any other. Or shows, or book

Comments

[zahrawithaz]

Love your inversion of this meme.

one of the steps towards realising "I don't like/love this anymore" was the realisation that I only liked one character, or one aspect, and disliked everything else. To me, watching or reading for one character alone while actively resenting everything else - the other characters, the fictional universe itself - is a guaranteed recipe for misery

I think I agree with you here. (Minority fannish opinion: This is what happened to me during the last DW finale, and it makes me so sad!) My own personal fannish tendencies often draw me to minor characters, though, so historically for me this dynamic has often involved watching them be shunted aside for the leads.

On the other hand, part of me thinks that this can work for certain stories, if they privilege certain characters in certain ways. I'm reminded of some Othello productions that I've seen--one in which everyone and everything (costumes, sets) except Iago was awful, and one in which the reverse was true. The former was undoubtedly the better production.

Really love your choices here--all of which are on my watch or really-should-watch-someday lists. Am I right that Doctor Who is the only one that isn't an ensemble cast? (I think the multiple Doctors and companions over the years puts it in a different category.)

Merlin really is so huggable, isn't it? And for all that it and Firefly are different in so many ways in terms of what the shows consider important (wow, that would be a fun comparison), they do both have a lot going on in both foreground and background in a way that makes it easy to imagine being in love with the show, rather than with select favorites.

I am impressed that you can hum the Merlin theme song, btw. It's never struck me as particularly hummable. (I'm secretly hoping for new opening credits this series, because the current ones just don't showcase the visual beauty of the show, in my opinion.)

[selenak]

Come to think of it, I did see an Othello where everyone except Iago sucked wasn't at their best, Oliver Parker's film version with Kenneth Branagh as Iago. KB was the first Iago to sell me on the honest, honest Iago reputation, i.e. that everyone assumes Iago is the hail, fellow, well met type. (Because it's not just Othello - all the other characters believe this, too, instead of suspecting him.) But other than Branagh, I found that film a complete disappointment (granted, the Welles film is one of my favourite Shakespeare based movies of all times, so there was that disadvantage...), and this one performance wouldn't save it for me.

Ensemble show: well, it's really difficult to say about DW as a whole because only with the Sixth Doctor did "one companion at a time" become the default option. Before that, it more often than not were several companions at a time, which makes an ensemble. Otoh, the nature of the show - i.e. the cast keeps changing, and so do the producers and scriptwriters - makes it hard to classify it as anything. You're right, though, all the others are definitely ensemble shows.

Humming the Merlin theme song: my own ability is nothing compared to our valiant cast who can do this a capella in their audio commentaries. :)

Firefly and Merlin: yes to al lof it, and you're right, there would be some great meta in a compare and contrast, as different as they are. The way they use backstory alone, and also the contrasting "the system is bad, though some individuals may be good" versus "the system is okay, though the present monarch is not" assumptions.