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Is it important to Identify with characters? This question occurred to me as I was watching a rather banal sitcom, Rules of Engagement. I love two of the stars, David Spade and Patrick Warburton, but it's not really that engaging a show, the humour is anodyne and a lot of it is based around traditional gender roles and expectations, but I forced myself to watch it anyway just to see more of the aforementioned stars. The only way I was able to get into it was because I somewhat identified with David Spade's character- being a small blonde guy with long hair and a bit of a perv, haha!
We discussed the idea long and hard in this Quackcast and came to some interesting conclusions. One of the ideas floated was that you don't have to identify with any of the characters at all as long as the story is good enough. Another idea is that there are ways to make the audience identify with ANY character regardless of who they are; first person writing is the easiest, making them the main POV character can work, making them an underdog, or giving characters a relatable feeling, experience or situation works too.
The classic way of doing it is to make the character somehow similar to the audience it's intended for. This is a banal, amateurish, and basic way of doing things, but it makes up for basic writing. It's why most action films have traditionally have average, bland male stars, usually white and looking between 20-40, and “chick-flicks have the same thing but with a woman. It's why animes often have an extremely bland male star as the main character, especially for harem anime. And this is also the reason for the current fad of gender-swapping and ”race-swapping“ in everything, though through that they're attempting to broaden appeal.
I think representation is a related factor (But NOT the same thing), and that IS important: to be able to see that people like you are ”seen” by the rest of the world and represented in the stories you consume is essential for a sense of self and how you fit into the world. It's something that's needed: people who look like you, talk like you, with lives like you, the same sexuality, gender etc. being represented positively in the stories you consume. That will never not be important! But main character doesn't need that unless the writing is super thin.
I rationalise this because even though I'm a straight, white, middle-aged, Australian man I easily identify with any main character regardless of age, gender, sexuality, nationality or ethnicity when the writing is good. But when it's not you cling to what you know: Anything familiar.
What do you think? Should main characters always be made to be audience proxies? And if so how should that be done? Can you name things where you identify with none of the characters but still enjoy it anyway?
This week Gunwallace gave us a theme inspired by the Railroad of the Wallachian Library - Creepily atmospheric… grey twilit mists swirl and eddy, tensions build, electricity crackles the air as your hackles rise… a ghostly locomotive charges out of the billowing fog only to disappear into the darkness.
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the Railroad of the Wallachian Library - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Railroad_of_the_Wallachian_Library/ - by thehereticlocomotive, rated M
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Quackcast 716 - Identify with characters?
Ozoneocean at 12:00AM, Dec. 3, 2024
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Identify with characters?,
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Ozoneocean at 6:31PM, Dec. 4, 2024
@Ksteak That can work, or making a person venal and scheming can too, like in Blackadder 2. He's low-key evil but I still identify with him because his selfish impulses are understandable. Whereas Basil Faulty from Faulty Towers is NOT someone I ever identify with, no characters in that show are, despite their many faults and relatable frustrations, haha!
ksteak at 6:28PM, Dec. 3, 2024
" always be made to be audience proxies?" it doesnt need to be as blatant as the cardboard cutout guy in a harem anime. it's what character flaws are for. we don't generally identify with someone that is perfect and always gets it right. give them a fondness of overeating or like of bad jokes in inappropriate situations, and then youre catching readers' attention.
Ozoneocean at 6:20PM, Dec. 3, 2024
@dragonsong12 - yup! Everyone always thinks they're in the right, true. Haha! And yes, representation is very important- Not to tick boxes (the was some seem to use it), but to freshen things up, make them more diverse and realistically reflect the world around us.
Ozoneocean at 6:14PM, Dec. 3, 2024
@Marco- Targeting is bad, in my point of view. It never works because it's ALWAYS false: the creator is almost never that target audience themselves, they're just cynically crating something they think will a appeal to them. When I was a little kid the only reason I'd watch or read things with kids as the main characters is because that was what was available. I always preferred stuff with adult main characters. Targeting is always wrong. I know that's a sweeping statement and making those is something to avoid but that's one area I'm more confident in.
Ozoneocean at 6:09PM, Dec. 3, 2024
@Maro- it's a complicated process. I think it only helps to get to technical levels of specificity when it's not working in order to fix things... I thing generally that it's possible to feel this stuff out.
marcorossi at 8:47AM, Dec. 3, 2024
When I say that identification is more about values than immedesimation, I mean this: think about Roky 4 where simple american blue collar guy is against Ivan Draga, representative of the evil supertechnological USSR. Here people identify with Rocky because he represents them in terms of values: he's one of us, he is a simple blue collar guy (the other is clearly trained in superscientific places etc.) and so on. So one is supposed to think that Rocky is "good" and Draga is "evil". But this is more about values represented in the movie than about immedesimation (that instead is built by telling the story from Rocky's POV).
marcorossi at 8:42AM, Dec. 3, 2024
In my opinion, there is a difference between immedesimation (I read the story of the Queen of Spain from her point of view, so I immedesimate in her), identification (I see a 40-50yo fat white guy and I say "hey that's me!"), and targeting (when I was a 16yo I read the stories or Ranma 1/2 who also was 16, so I was interested in love stories for that age bracket). I think that immedesimation in one characther is fundamental because if it doesn't happen, the reader will just not worry about what happens in the story; identification though is something a bit different: I migh immedesimate more in a nerdish 16yo girl than in an adult male who is more action oriented - it is difficult to tell what will work for identification and what not; identification is probably more about the values of a story than about immedesimation. Finally, "targeting" is more about what event in a story one can expect (e.g. a 16yo romance is not going to end with marriage or even sex).
dragonsong12 at 6:45AM, Dec. 3, 2024
To add: I'm glad you singled out representation as being a different thing, because I'm super on-bard for that (again, even at just a basic level it just makes stories more interesting to have a wider variety of view points) while simultaneously having little patience for the people who will dismiss a story if it doesn't ~appear~ to star a character they identify with. Because as you point out, this is all just smoke and mirrors, we're all human and ANY character can be identified with as long as they are well-written.
dragonsong12 at 6:42AM, Dec. 3, 2024
Yeah, I never saw the need to personally identify with characters myself. I guess because I never saw myself represented in characters who shared surface level similarities with me, I learned very quickly to consider other perspectives. Honestly, at this point in my life, I have very little interest in seeing "myself" in media - I already know what that's like, show me a new point of view! Get me into another person's head! I feel this way in my own writing too, most of my characters are deliberately NOT like me, because it's just more interesting to present another viewpoint and explore how that would be rationalized. I try to write every character - even the most stereotypically evil - from the perspective that they're right, because EVERYONE thinks they are. It's only recently that I actually created a character to represent myself and even then it's more to explore flaws than to self aggrandize.
kawaiidaigakusei at 1:17AM, Dec. 3, 2024
Your description of David Spade just described most of the characters he played in movies. Whoo hooo! The featured comic and featured music were in alignment today.