Good and Bad Characters

 How is it that so many good characters, in literature and films, and probably in other works such as stage plays, are so dull? Just think of the princesses in Disney animation, such as Snowhite, just so flat and two- dimensional. On the other hand, the villains are generally far more interesting and complex and make more interesting characters, which, although we know they are evil in most cases, we tend to root for them and cheer for them usually. Think of Abanazer, the wicked character in the 'Aladdin' pantomime, or the Ugly Sisters in 'Cinderella,' they are more fleshed out than the flat and rather dull central characters of Aladdin and Cinderella. In Dickens, so many of his central characters seem rather uninteresting. Think of Oliver in Oliver Twist. He's at the centre of the story, things happen to him, but he never initiates anything. Similarly, with David Copperfield and Nicholas Nickleby. These characters don't appear to have any effect on what happens to them, it's the characters who revolve around them who do all the work of moving things forward. In that respect, they are somewhat helpless. It appears that they can't change the course of their lives or their story journey. At the heart of a good story, there should be a journey in the sense that the lead character changes during the course of the story, so by the conclusion they have learned something and in that respect, changed.

In any form of storytelling, you have to have some sort of conflict, otherwise, your story can become flat and routine. The main protagonist needs a character to work against, so a good villain should be the character who creates this conflict. It's rather like sandpaper. It takes off the rough edges, shapes the protagonist. If he/she can overcome their problems, then they will grow and by the end of their journey through their story, they will have learned something.

Some cliches are used whenever the author wants to make sure the reader 'gets' whether a character is either good or bad. Used a great deal in television drama. Think EastEnders or Coronation street or one hundred and one Hollywood blockbusters. Colour is often used, as regards clothing. Dark is usually associated with 'bad.' (For years in television westerns from what I remember from being a child.) The villain almost always wore a dark shirt or jacket. The goodies usually wore light-colored clothing.  Think Dark Vader in the Star Wars films. He's black. You can't see his face (generally, if you can't see a character's face, either because he wears a mask (as Vader does.) or dark glasses, usually highly reflective, he's the bad guy. 

Disney has recently been raiding their back catalogue to reinvent some of their villains, such as Maleficent, who is the bad fairy who didn't get invited to the princesses Christening in the 1950's animation, 'Sleeping Beauty' and given her own film, starring Angelina Jolie. More recently they have given Cruella De Vil, the villain who wants to make dalmation puppies' coats into her own fashion accessory, namely, her own coat, in the 1961 animation classic '101 Dalmations' and the 1996 live-action remake. It's as if they are trying to give these characters a reason to be the way they are. Backstories or 'origins' stories. Disney is busily remaking all their classic animation movies, 'Beauty and The Beast,' 'Cinderella', 'Jungle Book', 'The Lion King' etc etc. Really for no better reason than they have the technology to make them using such things as three-dimensional computer animation. Not actually an improvement on the original and, frankly, a lazy way to create films.

Some, what I would call 'classic' villains in some of the classic fiction have been weakened by being portrayed as comic in such shows as 'Oliver!' and 'Les Miserables.' Fagin, the pickpocket gang leader, is made out to be a comic character in the musical when he's anything but comic in the novel on which it is based. He's far more evil and contemptible than the portrayal in the stage and film adaptation. The same can be said of Thenardier and his wife in 'Les Miserables' where they are sort of knock-about characters, but with a villainous streak. Perhaps this watering down of these characters is to make these shows more palatable for family audiences.

Why do so many villains in fiction have sidekicks who are often portrayed as bumbling idiots? The two henchmen of Cruella De Vil in the original novel by Dodie Smith and then the Disney versions of 'The 101 Dalmations' are shown to be totally inept. In some ways this is just for comic effect, but why on earth would someone employ such totally incompetent?

So, to wind up. I think I have managed to give fairly good summation of why and how so many dull characters, usually the central protagonists in some stories are so dull, compared to the more rounded and complete characters of the villains. We, as the audience, tend to want to root for those characters rather than the limp central characters.

Temp Jobs

I have done lots of other jobs besides working in theatre. I have mentioned in earlier posts my time working in stage management with a variety of different regional theatres. But I have also spent quite a lot of time working for temp agencies. Not all of it what you would call 'intelligent' in that it wasn't exactly using much intelligence, just a means to an end you might say, a way to pay bills and keep the proverbial 'wolf from the door.' I don't know what the situation is now as regards temp work, but some 20-30 years ago you could sign up with several temp agencies and almost always rely on one of them to provide some sort of work. I used to be with Blue Arrow and Manpower in Bedford. If my memory serves me well, I worked for a now-defunct agency called Find-A-Job. More on these later, but at one time I had a more permanent job for a company called A.M.S. (I'm not sure what the initials stood for, but I believe it was a subsiduary of Blackstone or some such named company.) Anyway, A.M.S. was based in a building in Costin Street,  off Bedford's Midland Road, and sold and distributed motor spares to garages and motor mechanics in and around Bedfordshire and surrounding counties. You must remember that this was around 1977-78. They employed van drivers who went out delivering these car spares and I was one of them. We would do two deliveries, morning and afternoon. Sometimes we worked Saturdays, but I'm not sure whether this was every week. Anyway, the job was advertised in the Bedford Job Centre. I was actually quite surprised when I got offered the job, as my only real qualification was that I had a clean driving licence and that I could drive, and I suppose had a relatively good knowledge of the local area. I think that was part of the attraction of the job, driving around the Bedfordshire countryside. As long as the items were delivered to the correct place, it didn't really matter how fast or slow you did it. It was also great that you weren't constantly being supervised, there was nobody looking over your shoulder all the time. When I started the job I was shown the 'route' by another member of staff who had done the job for quite a while, a lady who lived, I believe, in Marston Mortaine. It wasn't exactly difficult, it meant remembering where most of the garages were, and in particular, the motor repair shops that are/were hidden away in back streets and on out-of-the way industrial estates and villages dotted about throughout Bedfordshire. I have to say, as a creative person, and as someone who enjoys writing and at present is in the process of writing a novel (and other pieces) all this sort of work is really useful, as I have a good filing system (my memory!) and meeting so many various people over the years means I can recall characters for inclusion in my writing. So, however boring and mundane a job might be, whether it's delivering car parts or working on a production line, it means I have got plenty of characters to draw on!

I used to get a lift from my home in Cople, Bedfordhire, on a Saturday morning, from the manager of the A.M.S. branch. I really cannot now remember his name. He drove to the branch with his wife who I presume went shopping in Bedford, while he was working in the office in Costin Street. They also had a son, who wasn't exactly the  brightest candle in the packet (or whatever metaphor you can come up with!) Let's just say he wasn't exactly top-draw intellectual material. He wouldn't make it to Mastermind or University Challenge, let's say. When I first began at A.M.S. he was off on sick pay, as apparently he'd had an accident on his motorbike or something.  I think he only got the job because his father was the manager. I think they lived in Sandy, which is some 12 miles from Bedford, and meant they drove past Cople on their way to Bedford, so giving me a lift on a Saturday meant they weren't going out of their way. The whole family remind me strongly of the Thenardiers in Les Miserables (although not for any kind of criminal wrong-doing that those villains get up to in that book and musical, you understand!) Why? I don't know, but they certainly had that sort of air about them.  I'll write a bit more on this subject in my next post.