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avevale_intelligencer) wrote2014-01-31 01:11 am
avevale_intelligencer) wrote2014-01-31 01:11 am
A defence of one-dimensional characters
Martin Shaw, who played Ray Doyle in the ITC series The Professionals for a number of years, describes his character in that show as "one-dimensional." In reviews of films, books, telly shows, one of the harshest criticisms that can be levelled is that the characters have only one or at best two dimensions. In an age where "character-driven" is a guarantee of excellence in storytelling, and plot merely a vaguely desirable but purely ornamental feature, the cardinal sin is to shortchange the audience on the dimensionality of the characters. But is this fair?
Well, to start with, what do we mean by "a one-dimensional character"? Obviously, a character whose visible nature can be summed up in one line. A tough guy. A bored housewife. A big businessman. A prostitute. A weasel. A mother-in-law. Stereotypes, cliches, joke fodder, instantly recognisable tokens in the currency of fiction. There are many of them around, and not just in cop shows. You'll find one-dimensional characters in great literature and drama, perhaps not centre stage like Hamlet, but filling in the background. Stories need one-dimensional characters.
And come to that, so do we all. You'll meet thousands of people in your life once and never again. You'll buy a paper from them, or direct them to Copthorne Avenue, or exchange muttered, panicky monosyllables in the lift one day, and to you they will always be, as you will be to them, one-dimensional characters. How awful if, in every one of those brief and all but meaningless encounters, you were compelled to explore every multitudinous facet of each other's history and personality. You'd never get anything done. Perhaps in former times, when leaving your village was a major undertaking and you only ever knew six people in your life, you might get to know them inside and out, but that just isn't possible these days. People have to be one-dimensional, or we'd never fit them all into our lives.
So, one-dimensional characters are not by any means the big no-no that they might seem. But surely, you could say, when it comes to leading roles, the writers are under an obligation to flesh out their creations, to give them depth and vibrancy, to furnish them with rich and colourful back stories full of meaningful and piquant events?
And I say, are we?
Look at the aforementioned Ray Doyle. A tough guy, a one-dimensional character. Not, perhaps, very satisfying to play, for a young actor wanting to develop his craft. And yet in hundreds, maybe thousands of works of fan fiction, devoted admirers have picked up on tiny, almost subliminal hints in the canon and used those, combined with the power of their imaginations, to flesh out Ray Doyle and a hundred other one-dimensional characters to their own complete satisfaction.
And the key word just went by there. Imagination. Kids these days (he grumbled into his beard) want everything given to them, and adults do too. Gone are the times when a black and white, silent film was all the miracle of entertainment anyone could wish for. Now we want full colour, 3D (because we can't imagine things on a screen not being flat), 5.1 stereo sound, and if there's a dinosaur walking across the screen it had better be one hundred per cent realistic or there'll be hell to pay, because we no longer care to exercise our imaginations. We want it all handed to us, no effort required. And the same with characters. We can't be bothered (apart from those devoted fans I mentioned) to take a tough guy and flesh him out for ourselves with backstory and personality and vulnerabilities; no, it all has to be there on the page, on the screen, in the script, laboriously set down so that we don't need to think.
Or at least, that is what one might imagine.
The fact is that most people's imaginations are working perfectly well, and they can cope quite happily with characters whose other dimensions are left, as it were, as an exercise for the reader. It is only the vocal, vitriolic few, who love to point out "bad CGI" as if the existence of CGI at all were not a very recent technological miracle, who moan loudly when the animatronic model fails to be utterly convincing, who point and snigger at wobbly sets or hastily assembled costumes, whose piercing whisper of "he's not dead really" doubtless punctuated the climactic scenes of the Shakespearean tragedy which their school had generously allowed them to attend...it is these critics who, their imaginations failing them for lack of exercise, demand a degree of roundedness from the fictional characters they read about or watch which they happily waive in the case of the real person who sells them their newspaper.
Three-dimensional characters are unquestionably good. Two-dimensional characters are all right. But one-dimensional characters...
...they're ours.
Originally posted on http://avevale_intelligencer.dreamwidth.org. Comment here or there or both if you wish.
Well, to start with, what do we mean by "a one-dimensional character"? Obviously, a character whose visible nature can be summed up in one line. A tough guy. A bored housewife. A big businessman. A prostitute. A weasel. A mother-in-law. Stereotypes, cliches, joke fodder, instantly recognisable tokens in the currency of fiction. There are many of them around, and not just in cop shows. You'll find one-dimensional characters in great literature and drama, perhaps not centre stage like Hamlet, but filling in the background. Stories need one-dimensional characters.
And come to that, so do we all. You'll meet thousands of people in your life once and never again. You'll buy a paper from them, or direct them to Copthorne Avenue, or exchange muttered, panicky monosyllables in the lift one day, and to you they will always be, as you will be to them, one-dimensional characters. How awful if, in every one of those brief and all but meaningless encounters, you were compelled to explore every multitudinous facet of each other's history and personality. You'd never get anything done. Perhaps in former times, when leaving your village was a major undertaking and you only ever knew six people in your life, you might get to know them inside and out, but that just isn't possible these days. People have to be one-dimensional, or we'd never fit them all into our lives.
So, one-dimensional characters are not by any means the big no-no that they might seem. But surely, you could say, when it comes to leading roles, the writers are under an obligation to flesh out their creations, to give them depth and vibrancy, to furnish them with rich and colourful back stories full of meaningful and piquant events?
And I say, are we?
Look at the aforementioned Ray Doyle. A tough guy, a one-dimensional character. Not, perhaps, very satisfying to play, for a young actor wanting to develop his craft. And yet in hundreds, maybe thousands of works of fan fiction, devoted admirers have picked up on tiny, almost subliminal hints in the canon and used those, combined with the power of their imaginations, to flesh out Ray Doyle and a hundred other one-dimensional characters to their own complete satisfaction.
And the key word just went by there. Imagination. Kids these days (he grumbled into his beard) want everything given to them, and adults do too. Gone are the times when a black and white, silent film was all the miracle of entertainment anyone could wish for. Now we want full colour, 3D (because we can't imagine things on a screen not being flat), 5.1 stereo sound, and if there's a dinosaur walking across the screen it had better be one hundred per cent realistic or there'll be hell to pay, because we no longer care to exercise our imaginations. We want it all handed to us, no effort required. And the same with characters. We can't be bothered (apart from those devoted fans I mentioned) to take a tough guy and flesh him out for ourselves with backstory and personality and vulnerabilities; no, it all has to be there on the page, on the screen, in the script, laboriously set down so that we don't need to think.
Or at least, that is what one might imagine.
The fact is that most people's imaginations are working perfectly well, and they can cope quite happily with characters whose other dimensions are left, as it were, as an exercise for the reader. It is only the vocal, vitriolic few, who love to point out "bad CGI" as if the existence of CGI at all were not a very recent technological miracle, who moan loudly when the animatronic model fails to be utterly convincing, who point and snigger at wobbly sets or hastily assembled costumes, whose piercing whisper of "he's not dead really" doubtless punctuated the climactic scenes of the Shakespearean tragedy which their school had generously allowed them to attend...it is these critics who, their imaginations failing them for lack of exercise, demand a degree of roundedness from the fictional characters they read about or watch which they happily waive in the case of the real person who sells them their newspaper.
Three-dimensional characters are unquestionably good. Two-dimensional characters are all right. But one-dimensional characters...
...they're ours.
Originally posted on http://avevale_intelligencer.dreamwidth.org. Comment here or there or both if you wish.
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Collins, on the other hand, not only liked Bodie but wanted to be Bodie...
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It could as easily be argued that there are no one-dimensional characters--that every spear carrier and messenger is as real as the newspaper seller, their reality just hidden from us, waiting to be woken into life by our attention. But I think that would be giving too much credit to their original creators, and not enough to the fanwriters.
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It's okay to not get everything served nicely and finished, and I certainly don't mind using my imagination to fill in the gaps. But I happen to like character-driven stories, and I do tend to get bored when I get the feeling that a writer really couldn't care less who is going through that adventure they're writing. I don't need to know everything about a character, but if they're at the center of the story, I would like to see enough to get a feeling of what makes them tick, why they are doing what they're doing, and I love seeing how they develop through the things they experience. There will still be gaps to fill and imagination to be used, because no story ever covers every aspect (or if they do, they probably would never get any plot done at all, and probably not even then). So I find saying people who like multi-faccetted characters just don't want to use their imagination (whether for laziness or lack) is not really fair. It is a matter of taste and preference, and liking them multi-facetted is just as valid as liking them more open and not predefined (or one-dimensional, if you prefer). Just as liking plot-centric stories is just as valid as liking character-centric.
Sure, they're usually not equally fashionable at the same time. But definitely equally valid.
(I don't know The Professionals, so can't say whether I find this character Doyle specifically one-dimensional and whether it would bother me in that specific case.)
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I also think, however, that some of those who loudly complain about characters being "one-dimensional" or "cardboard" simply don't choose to put in the effort of engaging with a story or a character. They almost certainly have imagination and could engage if they wanted to, but they prefer to stay detached and criticise from that viewpoint because it makes them seem clever. To themselves at least. And that I have no patience with.
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Well, my problem with THE PROFESSIONALS....
We'd already had the Birmingham Bombings by then: the truth about the convictions hadn't come out though.
THE PROFESSIONALS was the seed that lead to 24 all those years later.
And though my acting career never gave me the chance to play a regular character much I know the pain that Martin Shaw must have felt which would be the feeling of saying to the director "why the hell is my character doing this?" or to the writers "is there anything you can give me to work with?" and being told "just say the lines".
Mind you, my pain would have been much reduced by the money.
Yeah, if you can look good people will project meaning into your face and deeds. It's still better to make something of your own.