small and unimportant things (my own interests and concerns included). The 'primary importance' of individual people can very easily simply disappear when you look at the world through such a wide-angled lens.
Have you ever tried looking at people as *animals*? I don't mean to dehumanise them in any way, just to stop seeing the person for a moment, and see instead an individual of one particular offshoot of the evolutionary tree. People can look startlingly different if you get the right mind adjustment.
It seems to me that to talk about ideologies as if they were something concrete, something "out there" independent of individual humans is... strange. And rather dangerous. The sort of logic that sets up governments to work "for the good of the State" while losing sight of the fact that "the State" is simply composed of the individual human beings who live there.
You seem to be confusing ideology with political doctrine. Doctrine is largely overt, visible (in terms of government policy decisions etc) and unambiguous. Ideology - that tacit code of convention we all subscribe to - is largely invisible, and often very ambiguous. It's the unwritten rules buried deep in the heart of culture, the ones we obey without even realising that they are rules, albeit quite arbitrary in many cases. And in a way, it *is* independent of individual people. We, the individuals, dance along to its tune without even hearing the notes. That includes fictional characters, because the tune is still there, written in by the unwitting author. If we all hear pretty much the same tune, then we're all going to dance in pretty much the same way. Individuality diminishes. It can even disappear altogether.
"The State" - or just society - is *not* simply composed of individuals. Once you start considering people collectively, they become something other than a collection of individuals. Many - perhaps most - people actually *want* to lose their individuality, at least temporarily, to become part of something that is larger and at least feels stronger. It can be quite exhilirating, even euphoric (I presume most of us have been there at some time or other, whether at a football match, a rock concert, or marching down a street waving banners. I can only lay claim to the last, and not for years now). But even outside these obvious and public moments, the collective nature of human beings exists, in abundance, and the individual again necessarily disappears, blending into the ranks of the masses.
(FWIW, I don't think any of us are half as unique as we might like to think we are. Our individuality - or sense of it - comes from the combination of traits, attitudes, experiences and behaviour patterns that make us what we are. Since there are only so many traits and attitudes etc, any single one is going to be shared by an awful lot of people. A smaller - but still sizable - sample is going to share several if not many of the same traits etc as yourself. A few will be very similar on most important counts. A lot of particularities seem to be co-related, so if you have one there's a good chance you'll have one or more of the others that go with it. Trainspotters aren't collectively labelled geeky anoraks for nothing.)
That's the sort of association that this "ideology vs characters" thing has for me, anyway. I regard it as very important not to lose sight of the individual, and not to forget that all people are different. They may be shaped by their societies (something I would never dream of disputing) but they are not merely representations of their society, but complex beings in their own right.
Yes, they are complex beings, but also (not 'merely', but also) representations of facets of society, and of ideological values and positions. You and I both are complex beings (though some might say that I am just a being, and even the being part is a matter for regret), but there is more to both of us than just that.
Actually I would say that the representative dimension is all part of the complexity of being.
Neil
I'm not surprised that this is muddled because it seems very hard to
work
through and get answers. I've spent the past couple of days trying to
work
out just how much importance I place on the characters, and why, or how,
or
where it's located, and I've yet to come up with any answers.
Yes, I have much the same problem. Everything I've said about why I *am* a character junky is accurate, I think, but every time I stop and think about it a little more deeply, I realize that, well, it's a bit more complex than *that*.
What I do think, and I'm quite aware that this might be nothing more
than a
reflection of my own prejudices, is that my distaste for character
junkieism
(as opposed to those who practice it) lies in what I perceive as a superficial appraisal of the series. There is an exagerrated awareness
of
differences between individuals, whereas I tend to look for
similarities,
which in turn leads to the social or, dare I say, the ideological.
This probably has a great deal to do with what you value, and what you find interesting. To me, people are far more interesting than societies, and, in a sense, more important, because, after all, societies are only the higher-order product of interactions between individual humans. (Actually, I'm aware that that doesn't necessarily follow. Yes, human beings are the higher-order product of interactions between neurons, and I don't find neurons all that interesting. But, unlike neurons, individual human beings are incredibly complex, and thus, to me, incredibly interesting.)
There is also a focus on immediate impressions - what is said or done (or worn -
now
that is what I really do call superficial) - with an implied reluctance
to
look deeper than the cosmetic surface.
That's very interesting to me, because it *is* very different from my own view of things. Agreed that focusing on fashion is highly superficial (though it can sometimes be fun!). But, to me, exploring the characters' internal lives *is* to look deeper than the superficial. To not simply accept the things that are said and done, but to explore *why* this thing was said and that thing was done, and what meaning those words and actions have for the people involved, beyond their superficial part in the action-adventure plot. In fact, if anything, I probably tend to see the background -- including many of the sociological aspects -- as something superficial, something that only takes on a real depth when you investigate the effect it has on the lives of these individual people.
The ideological dimension (if we want to call it that) may be more *abstract*, in a way, than the character dimension, but it seems mistaken to me to call it "deeper." How deep something is, in a context like this, I think, depends a hell of a lot on just how deep you're willing to *look* at it.
And that devotion to 'playing the game' - discounting the external contribution of the process of
production
(writers, directors, actors, budget etc).
Me, I can slip back and forth between the two modes, as necessary (and interesting), but, to me, "playing the game" is far more rewarding. Possibly because it requires a real creative effort on the part of the viewer. It's like a puzzle: can you make everything work together consistently? And if you *can*, the result is a very rewarding subcreated world (to borrow Tolkien's term).
Which is fine for threads that confine themselves within those limits,
but
not so fine when it gets dumped on threads that try to step out of those narrow parameters.
Good point. This is certainly the sort of thread where the two viewpoints can get quite tangled up. (I admit that I've had a bit of difficultly, through parts of this discussion, deciding just which mode I ought to be in at any given time.)
-- Betty Ragan ** ragan@sdc.org ** http://www.sdc.org/~ragan/ "The truth shall make ye fret." -- Terry Pratchett
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