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.

More Politically In-Correct Books and Films

Continuing on the theme begun in my last blog post, what about all those other works of literature, usually aimed at children, as well as films? Just think of a series of books that I read avidly as a child, beginning with "Swallows and Amazons" which were written by Arthur Ransome. They were about a group of children who seem to spend their lives perpetually on holiday in either the Lake District, Norfolk or Essex. The children are John, Susan, Titty and Roger Walker. I don't think, in all honesty, you could have a character called Titty in a book nowadays. Sorry, but the name just causes (sorry for the pun) a titter. You would have to re-name the character for a modern audience. I think it's the fact that they sail their boats on one of the Lake District lakes (I think it must be Windermere, but I'm not sure.) and there's no attempt to them wearing life jackets of any sort. When I was growing up, my father was an avid sailor, and had several yachts, some of which were sailed on the River Ouse near where we lived, mostly at Cardington Mill. We were never allowed in these boats unless we either wore a life jacket (generally a very bright orange or yellow) or we could swim proficiently (about the only decent thing I ever got from going to Rushmoor School was the fact that I learnt to swim). The stories of the Walker children continue in several other books, Pigeon Post, Swallowdale, Peter Duck, Winter Holiday, We Didn't Mean To Go To See. I think he later books might have been set in and around the Essex coast. As we used to go on holiday each year to Frinton-On-Sea, and the inlets in and around Walton-On-Naze, which was a little bit further up the coast from Frinton, this gave the stories a good deal more interest to me because I could picture the places in the books. But I think it's the fact that there's no hint of 'Health and Safety' and neither the fact that they wander around the Lakes and surrounding countryside free from any sort of adult interference. When you consider things like 'Child Protection' today, and the unfortunate stories that have come out recently about child abuse, it makes these stories, although written in the 1930's, even more intriguing. It's sad that today's children don't get the freedom to roam about as the children do in those books. Even when I was growing up in the 1960's there was no such thing as 'Health and Safety' or 'Child Protection.' Infact, when I consider the fact that living on a farm alone had many dangers and perils that would make the place a possible death-trap. We built hideouts in amongst the hay and straw bales, never once thinking that they might collapse on us and suffocate us or even catch fire. I used to make tree-houses, fairly high up in some oaks trees in the garden at Malting Farm. Thinking about it now, I could have easily fallen out of the tree and broken a leg, arm or whatever. You didn't think things like that were in the least bit dangerous in those days, but I suppose children never see the dangers in anything.

Returning to Swallows and Amazons. In the mid-1970's they made a cinema film of the book. It was, by coincidence, at the time I was an A.S.M., working at Century Theatre in Keswick. We did a series of four plays, running in repertoire, and changing every two days. Hard work, to say the least. When they began filming (no doubt on Derwent Water, on which Keswick is near). When we were out looking for props in the town for the plays we were staging, we often got asked whether we were from the film unit. It was also a coincidence that this film had a screenplay written by David Wood    who was in a play that I worked on at Greenwich Theatre called "A Voyage Round My Father" by John Mortimer. The director of the film was Claude Watham who also directed the Mortimer play, as he had done when it was originally done as a 'Play For Today' on BBC Television.

Back on books and films. Just think of Harry Potter. Why didn't the Dursleys, who had young Harry as a lodger (where they actually related? Were they really Harry's aunt and uncle?) Nevertheless, they had Harry under their care, so why did the poor boy end up living under the stairs? Why were they never prosecuted for child abuse? Expecting the child to live in such confined conditions is surely abuse of some sort? Why didn't the authorities intervene?

Then think of Oliver Twist, in particular the musical version, on stage and screen. What are they teaching children if they watch Oliver! That crime seems to pay, perhaps? Teaching youngsters to PICK POCKETS! Really terrible.

I seem to have veered off course about unsuitable or politically un-correct films for children, but never mind. I'll get back on the them in another blog post. It was good to reminisce on various things. The whole point of these blog posts I suppose.

Further Thoughts on 'Downton Abbey'

Warning: Spoilers

We have been watching the television series 'Downton Abbey' on catch-up. Over the last few weeks we have more or less 'binged' on the show.  The earlier episodes have been shown on the digital channel I.T.V Encore and then put on download or 'catch-up' through our Sky subscription, but we were stuck at the end of series 4 and there were no more episodes so we were left stranded, mid-air, as it were. We now have an Amazon Fire Stick which allows you to watch films and television shows which are streamed via the internet and, as members of what is called Amazon Prime, we can see a lot of stuff free (although we pay a £79 annual subscription which also means we can get free postage and packing when we buy anything via Amazon's website which is very convenient.) We did attempt to see the first episode of the series when it first came out, but, having watched it including advertising, we gave up. It has been taken over by so much advertising we couldn't cope with it, and  one of the advantages of catch-up television is that there's no advertising every ten minutes or so. Ads for sofas, car insurance and mobile phones is enough to put anyone off. We discovered that 'Downton Abbey' was one of the many television series we could watch, but up until the end of series 4. It appears that the final series is not free to watch. We will have to pay considerably more to watch it, but it's likely to be free once the final, Christmas episode is shown on Christmas Day. I have mentioned the show in previous posts but since watching it up until the end of series 5 (sorry, I refuse to use the American term 'season.') there is a good deal more about it which I want to discuss.

I'm still more interested in the 'downstairs' staff than the 'upstairs' family. The Earl of Grantham, as played by Hugh Bonneville, is a real stick in the mud. Reluctant to break with tradition and see the estate move forward into the 20th Century, or so it seems. Likewise, Carson, the Butler, seems to do anything to avoid any sort of modernisation. Why do the ladies need maids to help them dress and undress? Likewise, the gentlemen, can they not dress themselves? I understand that, during the earlier period, the Victorian and Edwardian eras, when the women wore corsets, loads of petticoats, had lots of hooks and eyes in their boots and shoes and cross-lacings in their dresses which would require a lady's maid to help, and the men wore stiff collars and cuffs in their shirts and the fact that clothes needed more care because they needed folding neatly, but it seems the aristocrats are incapable of any sort of work. But in the later period, for example the 1920's when clothing became simpler, ladies wore lighter dresses without any sort of lacings, they wouldn't obviously need assistance with their dressing and undressing. I can see, as regards plots, the valets and ladies' maids are integral to the storilines as they have to keep secrets divulged by their misstresses and masters. As regards the kitchen staff, as time goes on there are more appliances used in the kitchen which made the staff's lives much easier. We have visited many National Trust properties and seen the kitchens, notably Crag Side in Northumberland and Ickworth in Suffolk and they have modern (or at least, modern at the time they were introduced in, say, the 1920s and 30's.) At Cragside, for instance, the whole house was run using hydrolectric power. Infact, I believe it might have been the first country house to use any sort of electricity. The power generated worked such things as spits for roasting and even a lift between floors of the house and lighting. In 'Downton Abbey' the introduction of the telephone and radio seems to cause a huge stir amongst the artistocratic members of the household and the downstairs staff. At one point Carson is horrified by the thought of having to use the telephone but after a while relents and uses the thing frequently.

The 'downstairs' staff have more interesting 'story arcs.' Daisy has had the most interesting 'story arc' and has definitely grown as the show has gone on. She is now considering an education and hopefully will be able to break free from a life of drudgery downstairs. All this bought about since she had lessons with the schoolteacher, a rather firey character with Socialist leanings. In one particular scene when she comes to dinner at the house, she gets on the wrong side of the Earl of Grantham with her left-wing views. At this point we see a different side of Robert not seen until then. I think the way the stories have managed to utilize historic events, such as the sinking of the Titanic at the very beginning of the first series, the First World War and it's effects on staff and family, the move forward into the 1920's, the 'Jazz Age' and the introduction of such things as motor transport, radio, telephone and so on has been well done. Also, how the class system has shifted and how ordinary people has aspire to greater things rather than be stuck in a rut at the bottom of the pile. However, it will be interesting to see how the aristocracy cope with change as they have to come to terms with this shift in the class system and how they manage to deal with declining estates, the upkeep of large houses and also their fortunes being eroded by higher taxation etc etc.

The Grantham family run and own a vast estate with acres of land and property and they are often seen on horseback. But only minimally. I think there has been a foxhunt at some point and we've seen one of the ladies on horseback at a steeplechase. I think the fox hunting element has been only seen on a very small amount  of screen time to avoid upsetting the politically correct contingency, but let's be honest, the aristocracy have not been known to avoid upsetting people with their hunting, shooting fishing and generally ill-treatment of the wildlife of the countryside. There has been some shooting going on, but what else do these 'types' get up to? Compared to the downstairs staff, they're generally a very dull lot. 'Stiff upper lip' describes them well. Don't show your emotions (the men, of course.) except when the dog dies, not show any affection for your better half. Reserved, stoical etc etc. Meanwhile, the women are self-centred, moody, emotional, and thoroughly heartless in some cases. Mary spent episode after episode moping after the death of Matthew (understandable, up to a point I suppose.) And then she became a man-chaser. Building up the hopes of many men and then ditching them at the last moment. Lady Edith has been seen moping over her child which she had illicitly and then tried to palm the poor child off on a farmer and his wife who live on the estate and then pretended that she wasn't her child. What a tangled web etc etc.

I suppose 'Downton Abbey' does have it's appeal. It's well enough made, written and acted. A lot of time and effort has gone into the look and feel of the thing. The period is evoked well with both the settings and costumes. But to be honest it's somewhat dull. It can best be described as 'chewing gum for the eyes.' What I mean is, it doesn't take many risks. It's typical Sunday evening entertainment. It fits the so-called 'Ovaltine Television' mold. We always seem to get either vets, nurses, midwives and other assorted professions in our weekly dose of drama on a Sunday night. And invariably costume drama of some sort. It's the sort of last thing we see before we go to bed as the weekend draws to a close and have to contemplate going back to work on Monday morning. It's totally inoffensive, doesn't upset anyone in any particular way and is thoroughly Middle Class. We get our fill of nostalgia, although, as someone or other said, 'Nostalgia's not what it used to be.' It moves along at a snails pace. No speeding cars, police chases, guns being fired. It won't 'frighten the horses' as someone else also said. I don't dislike it and it gives employment to a great many good actors. I have to say it's great to see Dame Maggie Smith in something and definitely in her element. As I've said in an earlier post, she does seem to get the best lines.

The upstairs characters are not really characters I can identify with. They're rich and arrogant. Can't they see that their lifestyle is gradually coming to an end? Would they not have had some idea that things would change after what happened in Russia in 1917 with the Revolution? As would have happened when Charles I was beheaded and Cromwell took over with the Commonwealth? I can't really identify with them. They don't in general terms have 'character journeys' because they don't have to strive for a better life because they have money, position, power and so on. Meanwhile, the downstairs staff have to not only work extremely hard, but if they want to break free from their lives of drudgery, they have to work harder than most to get anywhere away from the confines of the house. Although, saying that, they do have the protection of the house and the family, security up to a point, a roof over their heads and free board and lodging.The best drama comes when the characters have to go on a journey, a really good story arc, which means that by the end of the novel/play/film or whatever they have changed from how they started at the opening of the story. Think of Oliver Twist or David Copperfield or even Les Miserables, where Jean Valjean changes gradually during the course of the story.

I have seen documentaries on television which give a relatively accurate picture of what life in a country house would have been like, similar to the large house depicted in 'Downton Abbey.' Yes, I know, it was never intended to be a documentary. It's more of a soap opera for those who want to have aspirations above their current position in life. Similar in some ways to 'Dynasty' or 'Dallas.' But there are aspects of life on a country house and estate which seem to have been conveniently forgotten. Such as the fact that the staff have to get up extremely early each morning (usually before 6 a.m.) to make up the fires, carry coal in buckets great distances from goodness knows where, empty the slops (or to be more accurate, the bed-pans, 'guzunders' etc etc.) because most of these houses didn't have sanitation as we know it in the 21st century. Then there's the matter of slave ownership, as many aristocrats made their fortunes by owning slaves who worked for them on cotton plantations. And then when slavery was abolished many former owners got large sums of money in compensation from the British government which they then often used to invest in such things as the railways, canals and many industries. And I suppose to be fair, 'Downton Abbey' is set in the early part of the 20th century when most of what I have mentioned in this paragraph would have been eradicated. Also, many of the owners of these houses and estates were fair employers, who treated their staff with respect and gave them decent wages, for the time.

Blackberry-Picking and Sunshine

It's been a bright and sunny day today. Having seen blackberries on the brambles all along the Redway, as I walk with Carol to and from the Academy, it was too much for me to ignore them and so I went out this morning and picked quite a few. It looks, though, that others have had the same idea. Probably not as many as there might have been. And you can hardly blame people for getting the same idea as me as it's just a few yards from the back of our house onto the Redway and pick a bowlful of berries.

We have been searching for Carol's Driving Licence. The plastic card bit, which contains her driver's number. I have been on-line attempting to find a reasonable quote for our car insurance which runs out at the end of October. You have to put in your car registration number as it links to the D.V.L.C. database which brings up the make of car, model etc. I have my driving licence card in my wallet where I keep all my cards, loyalty cards such as Nectar and Tesco Clubcard, Debit cards etc. You also enter this driver number to show proof of your identity in order to set up your car insurance when you do this on-line with a number of insurance companies. So we have spent the past day searching the house for this card and eventually found it in the most unlikely of places but then we decided to just ring our current insurance company, Swinton, and decided to continue with our current company, but managing to get a better quote and avoid the hefty excess that was on the current policy. So, it's done and the policy will start at the end of October. The plastic card and the paperwork for Carol's driving licence was still stuck onto the 'Counterpart' paperwork section of the licence, as it had come in the post all those months ago and obviously had never been separated. They always seem to use the most sticky substance to attach these cards to either letters or 'counterpart' driving licences which are really difficult to remove. A gum-substance like chewing gum which then gets stuck to everything else it comes into contact with. Just annoying and unnecessary.

You no longer need to have the paper part of your driving licence. They have done away with this seemingly pointless bit of paper from the 8th June. I could never see the point of having the paper part of your driving licence as it was always getting lost. If the system was completely computerised it seemed a bit of a waste of time having it also on a paper document which was always going to be separated from the neat little picture card which you carried around in your wallet as I do with mine.

I walked to the shop in Galloways in Coffee Hall to take money out of the A.T.M. there this morning. Not only is walking good exercise, but it allows me to think positively about my writing and I've now got some more ideas to put into the various bits of work I'm working on. Well, if walking was good enough for Charles Dickens, who used to do his best thinking for his novels whilst walking, then it's good enough for me. it's so easy to take my iPod and listen to a podcast which I can download easily, but pondering plot-structure seems far more positive and useful. No end of squirrels chasing up and down the trees and on the grass. They come really close to me and I spent some time watching them. We seem to have quite a few of these cheeky, nimble little creatures around Milton Keynes. Also, I find many conkers under the horse chestnut trees along the side of the road and pick a handful up to take home. Do children still go 'conkering' as we used to as children? Do they still tie them onto bits of string and play the game of 'conkers' or have the 'health and safety' people stopped this game? Pity if they have.

I'm actually reading a Charles Dickens novel at the moment, 'Nicholas Nickleby.' I read it over 30 years ago, just before the famous Royal Shakespeare Company production was shown on Channel Four in  it's opening year. A good old-fashioned story that fair cracks along at a good lick and keeps you entertained with some of his most intriguing and preposterous comic creations. I'm sure that Victor Hugo must have read it, along with 'Oliver Twist' as there are some similarities with his 'Les Miserables' which I have also read. 

Recent Reading . . . and Some Writing . . . Part 2

I mentioned in the last post how I was influenced by radio drama for my selection of reading material. I suppose the same could be said of what I watched on television. The first big drama adaptation I remember was 'The Forsyte Saga" which would have been one of the really big serial adaptations done by the BBC in the early 1960's and I think opened on the new channel BBC 2. We didn't have BBC 2 at the start of it's broadcast in 1964 as you had to buy a special set as it was in 625-lines as all other channels were 405-line and you had to have a duel set that could receive the new channel as well as having a special ariel which we didn't have, so I would have had to wait a few years later for this series to be shown on BBC 1, perhaps around 1967-8. I read all the novels, written by John Galsworthy. I think there must have been around 9 or 10 books and the television adaptation ran for some 26 episodes. I cannot imagine a television adaptation running to that many episodes today. Something like 'Downton Abbey' runs for no more than 8 episodes a series, although the next series, the last, will be the 6th. 

The B.B.C., in all it's infinite wisdom, always showed some sort of adaptation of a 'worthy' classical novel at teatime on a Sunday during the 1960's, and over the years many Dickens adaptations were shown. I don't know why they imagined that Charles Dickens would be suitable for children, but I suppose it was aimed at what you'd call a 'family' audience. Today if they do an adaptation of a classic novel, Dickens, Austen, Eliot or whoever, they schedule it much later and as a result the productions are a good deal more hard-hitting. These productions were also done in much longer runs, say 12-13 episodes, which actually suits a Dickens as the novels were originally published in serial form. Today you'd be lucky if a production is 4 episodes or even less. I remember as a child they did 'Great Expectations' (and there have been numerous versions done over the years since.) and being terrified by the opening sequence where Magwitch, the escaped convict, meets the young and innocent Pip in the churchyard. I think I would have been as terrified in much the same way as Pip. I got to read the novel and from that began to read further Dickens novels. In the early days of Channel 4, around 1982, the year it opened, they showed a television version of the R.S.C. stage adaptation of "Nicholas Nickleby". It was done on stage in two parts and the running time was something like 8-9 hours. A truly memorable version. I read the book before it was shown on television. I am again reading "Nicholas Nickleby" and enjoying it very much. It is so full of some wonderful characters and, although you might say that Dickens does somewhat 'over-egg the pudding' with some of his writing, and it's not particularly fashionable, but it cracks along at a fair old pace and you can't call it boring in any way. It's hard to believe that Dickens was in his 20's when he  wrote it and also that it was published in episodic form, which makes me wonder how much he had planned the storyline in advance and how, once the episodes were published, did he wish he could go back and alter bits of the story? Also, he was writing the next novel, which I believe was "The Old Curiosity Shop," which would have overlapped "Nicholas Nickleby." It must have been very complicated to have two novels being written and published concurrently. No doubt he had started writing "Nicholas Nickleby" as the previous novel, "Oliver Twist" was being written and published. The thought doesn't bear thinking about. He must have been very organised.

I worked on an episode of "Sherlock Holmes", one of the Granada series which was made during the 1980s, when I did a lot of 'walk-on' work. It was "The Man With The Twisted Lip" and shot in King's Lynn. As a result of that I decided to read some of the stories and had a complete volume of the stories (since lost) but I now have an annotated set of volumes which has been edited by Leslie S. Klinger. I have been working my way through the stories gradually (not completed as yet.) The Granada series is being repeated on one of the digital television stations we can get through Sky (I think it is ITV Encore, which shows a lot of back-catalogue shows, including "Downton Abbey.") So I am able to see the stories in really good adaptations, although I must say some of the acting is somewhat 'over-the-top.' I'm not over-keen on the modern version of the Conan Doyle stories, "Sherlock" which stars Benedict Cumberbatch. I'm  afraid I prefer the original stories and don't like them being fiddled about with. I did see the first series and quite enjoyed them but the last series, for me, was a disappointment. I won't be watching the next series which is due out around Christmas.