On the appeal of bad boys and girls
A discussion I was reading brought up the question: "Is having a character you can relate to/identify with/root for necessary to your enjoyment of a show?" in the context of some viewers saying that they no longer enjoyed Weeds because there were no longer any likable characters and they could no longer root for Nancy. Other people listed shows that they watched where they never felt like they identified with anyone--The Sopranos, for instance--and didn't want to, but still loved the show. One person said they felt it was a particularly American thing to base enjoyment of a show on the show fitting into their own moral beliefs. I'm not sure if that's true or not. It's probably more a sign of a particular personality than a nationality.
There are probably more shows on now than ever before with explicitly "bad" characters. One would think these shows required an audience who liked characters who didn’t share their morality, but they seem to also attract a large number of people who think the characters do share their morality until they do something really bad and the illusion is broken (and the writers may be accused of making the character rape the dog/cross the moral event horizon).
More concrete examples within.
Probably spoilers to follow for Seinfeld, Weeds, Dexter...Hopefully you don't hav eto follow the shows to follow what follows.
I wasn't thinking of Seinfeld when I started this, but now I remember it was a great example. Whenever George Costanza was with his girlfriend Susan he felt trapped; but when they broke up he panicked and fought to get her back. He directly or indirectly constantly brought destruction into her life. Finally George, in a passive aggressive rebellion against their upcoming wedding, insisted on a box of cheap invitations. Susan was poisoned with defective envelope glue and died.
I remember an angry article written probably by that guy in TV Guide who's name I can't remember but whose opinions always seemed completely wrong to me--about how this behavior and the aftermath was so OOC for these sympathetic Seinfeld characters who we rooted for because they were just like us. It was hard not to let out that fandom cliché: What show have you been watching? Susan's death *exactly* followed George's pattern with her. He had to either kill her or die a metaphorical character death.
In this article the writer included sentence-long descriptions of the way these characters "used to be," painting George, Jerry, Elaine and Kramer as vulnerable people blown around by fate (and who needed to have children--he thought everybody should have children). Interpretations vary for everything, but I honestly think the show had been very clear that these characters were self-absorbed and saw themselves as victims when inconvenienced in any way. They considered themselves well-meaning (Elaine never foofed her hair when she went to the movies so the people behind her would have an unobstructed view) but their main motivation for caring about others came out of social expectations and wanting to see themselves as good.
The characters on Showtime's Dexter and Weeds are even more blatantly flawed.
Dexter Morgan kills because he likes to cause living people to be dead. Enjoys cutting them so that blood spills from their bodies. Enjoys chopping them up. His adopted father saw this in him early, and created a code. The main purpose of the code is Dexter's own survival. A secondary result is that Dexter's code mimics what we would call morality: he only kills people that he has proven to himself with evidence are killers of others. Breaking the code by killing on impulse, killing a stranger, killing a person who might have committed crimes but isn't a murderer, is a thrilling but dangerous temptation for Dexter-into which he sometimes gives. This makes morality a central question of the show in all sorts of ways. If one roots for Dexter--and rooting for him is part of the appeal of this show--it's not primarily out of a sense of him being right but about wanting him to survive. It's like that scene in Psycho where Norman Bates is sinking Marion Crane's car in the swamp. The car stops sinking for a second and in that moment we worry *with* Norman, sympathizing with him covering his tracks. We want him to get away with a crime we knew was wrong.
But I have regularly read responses to Dexter where people talk about Dexter as someone they root for *morally.* Not in the sense of his "taking out the trash" (an opinion the show examines) but as a victim. Dexter's character arc is described as curving towards healthy human. His killing is the fault of other people--his father should have sent him to a therapist who would have cured him of it, he's just confused in thinking he doesn't have emotions and doesn't love because he needs help. When he is healed he will stop killing and past killings then shouldn't be held against him.
Likewise with Weeds. Nancy Botwin is described as a woman in desperate circumstances trying to take care of her kids and/or protect her middle class life. But this season has made it more and more explicit that she's always been a danger junkie, a force of chaos, an Imp of the Perverse. Her husband's death was an excuse to make those kinds of choices and drag her kids with her. She regularly makes choices that endanger her survival and is rarely shown enjoying wealth.
Nancy and Dexter's conflict seem in some ways to come down to the same thing: can you be a good person while doing one very wrong thing? And that conflict depends on accepting that there is willfully bad behavior the characters choose and enjoy for itself. This is what makes them a successful serial killer and pot dealer. These "professions," either by definition or due to current laws, demand a taste for cruelty or callousness. One must disregard most things Dexter says and does for him to not really be a serial killer. Any time Nancy finds a place of calm that stalls her on her road towards the corrupted heart of her profession she destroys it and demands to be taken further. Nancy has always chosen the same way, it's just the choices she's offered that have changed.
I'm using these shows as examples because it seems like the whole appeal of the show as stressed even in advertisements is that they're about transgression and the fun being bad rather than redemption and learning to be good. So it kind of fascinates me to see it turned into the opposite kind of show. Instead of daring to step over the line and take us with them, the characters are pushed over the line and crying inside to be allowed back.
Short version: do you prefer characters you can stand behind as good, even if you have to overlook some of their behavior to think of them that way? Are there certain characters you've liked where this worked and other characters where it didn't work? And if so, why do you think?
There are probably more shows on now than ever before with explicitly "bad" characters. One would think these shows required an audience who liked characters who didn’t share their morality, but they seem to also attract a large number of people who think the characters do share their morality until they do something really bad and the illusion is broken (and the writers may be accused of making the character rape the dog/cross the moral event horizon).
More concrete examples within.
Probably spoilers to follow for Seinfeld, Weeds, Dexter...Hopefully you don't hav eto follow the shows to follow what follows.
I wasn't thinking of Seinfeld when I started this, but now I remember it was a great example. Whenever George Costanza was with his girlfriend Susan he felt trapped; but when they broke up he panicked and fought to get her back. He directly or indirectly constantly brought destruction into her life. Finally George, in a passive aggressive rebellion against their upcoming wedding, insisted on a box of cheap invitations. Susan was poisoned with defective envelope glue and died.
I remember an angry article written probably by that guy in TV Guide who's name I can't remember but whose opinions always seemed completely wrong to me--about how this behavior and the aftermath was so OOC for these sympathetic Seinfeld characters who we rooted for because they were just like us. It was hard not to let out that fandom cliché: What show have you been watching? Susan's death *exactly* followed George's pattern with her. He had to either kill her or die a metaphorical character death.
In this article the writer included sentence-long descriptions of the way these characters "used to be," painting George, Jerry, Elaine and Kramer as vulnerable people blown around by fate (and who needed to have children--he thought everybody should have children). Interpretations vary for everything, but I honestly think the show had been very clear that these characters were self-absorbed and saw themselves as victims when inconvenienced in any way. They considered themselves well-meaning (Elaine never foofed her hair when she went to the movies so the people behind her would have an unobstructed view) but their main motivation for caring about others came out of social expectations and wanting to see themselves as good.
The characters on Showtime's Dexter and Weeds are even more blatantly flawed.
Dexter Morgan kills because he likes to cause living people to be dead. Enjoys cutting them so that blood spills from their bodies. Enjoys chopping them up. His adopted father saw this in him early, and created a code. The main purpose of the code is Dexter's own survival. A secondary result is that Dexter's code mimics what we would call morality: he only kills people that he has proven to himself with evidence are killers of others. Breaking the code by killing on impulse, killing a stranger, killing a person who might have committed crimes but isn't a murderer, is a thrilling but dangerous temptation for Dexter-into which he sometimes gives. This makes morality a central question of the show in all sorts of ways. If one roots for Dexter--and rooting for him is part of the appeal of this show--it's not primarily out of a sense of him being right but about wanting him to survive. It's like that scene in Psycho where Norman Bates is sinking Marion Crane's car in the swamp. The car stops sinking for a second and in that moment we worry *with* Norman, sympathizing with him covering his tracks. We want him to get away with a crime we knew was wrong.
But I have regularly read responses to Dexter where people talk about Dexter as someone they root for *morally.* Not in the sense of his "taking out the trash" (an opinion the show examines) but as a victim. Dexter's character arc is described as curving towards healthy human. His killing is the fault of other people--his father should have sent him to a therapist who would have cured him of it, he's just confused in thinking he doesn't have emotions and doesn't love because he needs help. When he is healed he will stop killing and past killings then shouldn't be held against him.
Likewise with Weeds. Nancy Botwin is described as a woman in desperate circumstances trying to take care of her kids and/or protect her middle class life. But this season has made it more and more explicit that she's always been a danger junkie, a force of chaos, an Imp of the Perverse. Her husband's death was an excuse to make those kinds of choices and drag her kids with her. She regularly makes choices that endanger her survival and is rarely shown enjoying wealth.
Nancy and Dexter's conflict seem in some ways to come down to the same thing: can you be a good person while doing one very wrong thing? And that conflict depends on accepting that there is willfully bad behavior the characters choose and enjoy for itself. This is what makes them a successful serial killer and pot dealer. These "professions," either by definition or due to current laws, demand a taste for cruelty or callousness. One must disregard most things Dexter says and does for him to not really be a serial killer. Any time Nancy finds a place of calm that stalls her on her road towards the corrupted heart of her profession she destroys it and demands to be taken further. Nancy has always chosen the same way, it's just the choices she's offered that have changed.
I'm using these shows as examples because it seems like the whole appeal of the show as stressed even in advertisements is that they're about transgression and the fun being bad rather than redemption and learning to be good. So it kind of fascinates me to see it turned into the opposite kind of show. Instead of daring to step over the line and take us with them, the characters are pushed over the line and crying inside to be allowed back.
Short version: do you prefer characters you can stand behind as good, even if you have to overlook some of their behavior to think of them that way? Are there certain characters you've liked where this worked and other characters where it didn't work? And if so, why do you think?