The Hero, Part 2

You don’t have to like the hero, but . . . 

But you do have to identify with the hero’s desire.

This is tricky sometimes for writers to wrap their heads around. It’s going to sound like semantics, but I love thinking about it.

Think about this. I watched a movie about a cartoon fish and loved it. I watched a movie about a cartoon rat and loved it. How the heck is that possible? I’m not a fish or a rat or a cartoon. How could I possibly find enjoyment in Finding Nemo and Ratatouille?

It makes no sense!

And that’s a wonderful thing.

I’m not a cartoon fish, but I understand the father/son relationship.

I’m not a cartoon rat, but I understand the drive to pursue one’s calling in life.

Why do we read novels?

We read novels to live many lives in one life.

Why do we watch movies?

We watch movies to live many lives in one life.

I want to read about characters who are living different lives. I want new adventures and new perspectives. I want to feel like I’m risking my life without actually risking my life. I want to live a million lives!

And that’s what you can do when you read books and watch movies and see plays. It’s what stories can give you: many lives.

So when I open a book or start a movie, I’m primed for the experience. I want to identify with a hero and live their life with them. 

I say this because if you are resistant to a book or movie or play, then there’s very little that can overcome that resistance. You can close the book, stop the movie, and walk out of the theater. Easy. Walk away. A story cannot stop you.

You have to come to the story with an open mind, and most stories will wait until you’re ready. You can try again tomorrow. You can try again in a decade. The book will be there. The movie will be there. Another cast of actors will be on stage putting on a play.

So the audience needs to be ready to suspend disbelief, enter the fictional world of a story, and open up their hearts and minds to identify with a hero.

Sometimes this works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Not every story is for everyone. Not every hero is for everyone.

I remember I started watching the first episode of the American version of House of Cards about five times because people kept telling me the series was riveting. However, I simply could not get over the very first scene in which Frank Underwood kneels on the sidewalk to break the neck of an injured dog. I was out of the story so fast. Screw that guy. He’s killing a dog? I don’t want to hang out with this guy. I do not identify with this hero, nor do I want to.

I’m more of a John Wick kind of guy, I guess.

I tried again to watch the first scene of House of Cards. I stopped it again . . . and again . . . and again. I know the folks in charge of the series justified the scene by saying that if they could get the audience to stick with this guy after he kills a dog, the audience would stick with him through anything else. That may be true, but it’s also true that I did not stick with him. I never forgave him.

I hated him.

When I finally watched the series, I was only watching in order to see Frank Underwood punished. It’s a weird way to watch a show: to anticipate the severe punishment of the main character. I did not like being that type of audience member. I felt like a Puritan waiting for a public flogging. And Underwood was never punished, so I felt manipulated by the creators of the series. He never got what was coming to him!

Then again, they had warned me.

Creating a hero you love to hate is a tactic I’ve not tried. It has its risks. If you’re a writer, go for it if you want, but I don’t like being an audience member who’s there to love to hate the hero. I don’t love to hate, especially when that’s the one note the series is hitting over and over again. Hate is not a song I love to sing. So I’ve never used this tactic.

Keep in mind that I like writing about bad guys, even from the perspective of bad guys. But they’re bad guys. I don’t have to identify with them.

I might think they’re fascinating, like Mr. Smith in The Matrix, the Joker in The Dark Knight, Vincent in Collateral, or Alonzo Harris in Training Day. Those are awesome characters, but they’re not the main characters. 

Bad guys don’t have the burden of having to fulfill the hero’s function in a story, which is to persuade the audience to identify with their struggle. 

Antagonists by definition perform a totally different function in the story. It’s good to keep this in mind. I’m talking about characters who serve functions in a story. I’m not judging the character of human beings who may be mostly good and a little bad, like all of us.

So I can hate the antagonist as freely as I admire their charisma, but I don’t (as writer or member of the audience) want to inhabit the skin of a hero whom I despise, loathe, distrust, or fear. When I’m writing a novel, I want to become another person, in a way, so I can live their life, and I want to hit a lot of other notes than, say, the desire to punish myself.

But that’s me.

I wrote in the last entry, “The Hero, Part 1,” about life dreams that we can identify with because we’ve felt them in our own lives: desires for love, family, a home of one’s own. We don’t have to like the hero, or, more precisely, we don’t have to like everything about the hero. But we do have to identify with their desires, their dreams, their deep motivations.

We don’t have to have ever been in their shoes or their situation, had their jobs or eaten the foods they like. You will have certain expectations of a hero who is a ninety-year-old man in China in 1844. You will have different expectations of a sixteen-year-old girl in the US in 2022. 

What enables us to identify with them is an understanding of their desire.

A lonely ninety-year-old man in China may want to make amends with his estranged son. We can identify with that because it’s a primal family desire. 

A shy sixteen-year-old girl in the US may want to play ukulele in the high-school talent show. We can identify with that because it’s a primal desire to want to be accepted for who you are.

We don’t identify with others because of how they speak or what they wear or where they went to school. After all, we can identify with characters who are animals, cartoons, robots, and stick figures. We can identify with them, but it’s not automatic.

We identify with them when we see them strive for something. We see them work hard for something they want, and we understand that desire. We get it. We feel it. We’ve wanted those things, too. We’ve wanted friends, family, home, respect, acceptance, love, purpose, and success. 

When we see a fictional character striving sincerely, giving it everything they’ve got, battling obstacle after unfair obstacle, we make a compassionate leap and feel their struggle along with them.

Human brains enable us to make these compassionate leaps.

It’s how we’re able to love stuffed animals. It’s how we’re able to love fictional characters.

We have imaginations. We can take in whole worlds. We can live many lives.

Brains are cool.

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PHOTO: This is Ken, a doll we alter and sneak into the house of my brother-in-law’s family. They alter Ken and sneak him back to us. We’ve been doing this for a decade, I think. There will likely be more photos of Ken.