bill wrote:
>PS to Angela (rc-am) - I got to thinking about your reply, but I'm
still
>thinking about it. You want to know something weird I dug up upon
>reflection? The idea of watching TV is that you are supposed to
project
>yourself into the personality of the good-guy character, or at least
>that you are supposed to root for him. When the good-guy is in
peril,
>we're supposed to perch on chair's edge. When he is righteously
angry,
>we are supposed to be too. When he triumphs, we're supposed to fist
the
>air and yell, "Yeah! I won!" Conversely, we're supposed to hate the
>bad-guy. Right? Now here's what's wrong with me as a TV consumer.
>When I see the good-guy, I fail to empathize...
well, i mostly find myself in exactly the same position. and, i suspect you and i are not the only people on the planet who respond in this way. there are numerous tv shows which play exactly on this failure to empathise with the 'good guy'. i don't think 'bewitched' would have ever been such a long-running tv series if it hadn't been for the fact that most of the enjoyment came not from samantha being a good housewife and refusing to use her powers, but from her evil twin sister and mother always messing things up, and from the hubby being such an obvious idiot and narcissist. like this, most successful, as in long running and effective (rather than whether i liked them) shows situate a character who provides for the narrative space for the expression of 'bad' desires, or a place in which we can insert our resistant selves into the narrative flow whilst not exactly identifying with the character. bewitched was a recuperative narrative, but in order to keep people watching, ie., to actually be recuperative, it had to put on the screen a version of 'badness' that was clearly figured as enjoyable. these programmes try to immerse us in the narrative, even though we can't possibly identify with the hero.
the other example i would note is how goldblum's character works in 'independance day': he gets to nod and wink at us the viewer, allowing for the performance of cynical detachment, as if to say: 'yeah, we know this is all a joke, don't we'. a detachment that evaporates pretty soon into the war to save 'the human race', and the acceptance of his cynicism is really in the service of lulling us into 'simply enjoying', suspending any thought at all whilst watching. as a counterpoint to 'independance day', i think 'starship troopers' is arguably the most difficult film to watch: there is no enjoyment, no wink to the camera to say 'this is a joke, don't take it too seriously, relax and enjoy', and certainly no one i've ever talked to has said they felt they should, or even were able to, identify at all with any of the characters. which for me, makes 'starship troopers' one of the best films of all time. starship troopers is irony without the cynicism, no liberal or leftish meta-narrative location or character which would absolve the fundamentally racist character of the genre.
angela