To What Extent Are We Moulded by Our Fiction?
Finger Tapping a Few Ideas on my Grubby Keyboard...
7 to 9 min read
Themes of Change
Transition is a common theme with so many compelling characters. Look at Bruce Banner/Hulk or Bruce Wayne, the Batman.
Other examples are Beauty and the Beast, or the story of Anakin Skywalker who transformed into Darth Vader. None of us Brit's are a stranger to Doctor Who, the regenerating time lord. As you can plainly see there are innumerable stories with character transformation!
Mythology and lore across Europe has cool shape-shifting pagan gods along with werewolves and vampires! Further east the account of the Buddha's awakening is venerated. We could compile a huge list as long as the country.
Today the internet VSBattle Tiers rate characters on strength and ability. Fans create plausible fictional battles, for example, the cartoon version of Thundercats can be pitted against the Michael Bay Transformers movie. The magic is how fans meticulously follow the fiction, as well as how the fiction drives them to do so!
The Mental and Psychological
However, transformation, the complete alteration of a person in the mundane world we live in, doesn't usually involve super powers, gods or aliens, but onset mental illness can feel just as dramatic. Sudden mental illness can be one of the most life changing experiences an individual might undergo. Anxiety disorders, diagnoses of mood or thought and other conditions of the mind, can re-write someone's world.Films such as A Beautiful Mind, help depict our struggles with Mental illness fairly. It follows Professor John Nash of Princeton university who had a significant diagnosis. Another interesting example is the 2002 film, The Hours, starring Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman. It portrays the lives of three people from different times, in various parts of the world, all of whom are connected by Virginia Woolf's fictional novel, Mrs Dalloway. We see key historical moments of Virginia Woolf's transition into illness, while she tries to write the book that impacts on the other characters. It is chaos theory, showing the interconnection between fact and fiction; overlapping time and distance.
The Power of Influence
When creative teams from within the arts use story arcs, archetypes and play on scenarios wisely, it can result with direct change in the real world.
No matter what torments us, learning to be self-reflective and able to recognise our own unhelpful beliefs or ideas, is good for personal growth. Valuable stories help this happen. They shape who we are no matter where you live: Wild Bill Hickok, Wyatt Earp were legends of the Old West who inspired cowboys!
I'd like to think that most of us have our journey-like processes; not unlike those transformational archetypes we see in fiction. Actors study and imitate people in hope of nailing that Oscar winning performance; likewise, on the other end of the spectrum, when we feel deflated, we tend to watch them to feel better. Empathic creatures we are; our brains are packed with mirror neurons and as individuals we might borrow another person's idiosyncrasy, buzz phrase, mannerisms or jokes. It's fair to suggest single guys have tried the Eugene Fitzherbert smoulder from Disney's Tangled. Maybe Disney took inspiration from them?
Han Solo types are imperfect personalities or the 'lovable rogue' or an 'anti-hero,' a non-conforming rebel, with a flawed character. Ignorant of norms and appealing to the empathy (and sometimes the envy) of the viewers. Growing up in the eighties, it was clear how many boys wanted to be Han Solo or Indiana Jones. It wasn't just me who wanted to be like my hero.
'Our normal sensation of self is a hoax, or, at best, a temporary role that we are playing with our own tacit consent, just as every hypnotised person is willing to be hypnotised. The most strongly enforced of all taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego.'
Watts illustrates how 'the feeling of' who we are, in itself, is self-deceptive. Through time, who we believe we are, morphs into something else; I certainly don't want to wear a red headband and kill soldiers for the US anymore! Self-perception is malleable. This is just our outer superficial self, and we pay it lots of attention.
Unnecessarily, certain people work outside of contracted hours for free, because of their corporate identities. Concerning themselves with business matters of chief executives and upper management who earn way above their pay grade. A cage of one's own making. This is redefining yourself as person who is simply not you, it's unhealthy and goes against your nature.
Wayne thinks nothing of speaking out against the underprivileged on television. In the DC comic books, the philosophy of the Joker, in essence, explores how it only takes one truly bad day to become like him, a super villain. In the 2019 movie, Joker, Fleck experiences something akin to this process—like many people today. This anti-hero is the largest grossing movie; is this because the Joker resonates with our modern world? I believe so.
Ebenezer's Breakdown: A Spiritual Awakening?
A lonely, isolated, miserable, penny-pincher who undergoes an awakening and begins to live with compassion. The Charles Dickens novella: A Christmas Carol, was carefully written. Described as hard and sharp as flint, we see Scrooge follow a karmic arc of change, a 'we reap what we sow' moral. The name Ebenezer Scrooge was chosen wisely because of what it signifies. It's a Hebrew place name meaning 'help-stone,' a monumental type stone of religious significance.
In the book of Samuel, Eben-Ezer is a location where the Israelites fought the Philistines. It's as if Charles Dickens was seeking out a name that showed conflict; battles were fought at the religious help-stone, the duality of Ebenezer's nature is sealed in his name. Powerfully deep or coincidence?
In Old English, the word Scrooge means 'to squeeze'. This is exactly what he did through the story. He denied his employee, Bob Cratchit time off for Christmas and paid the man very meagre wages, giving no festive bonus for his poor family. However, this conflicted help-stone, the sharp, hard flint of a man, did not start out this way.
We know he is visited by what Dickens described as ghosts. If we peel back these dramatic embellishments of the misers experience, we're left with something different entirely. A lonely, isolated and stubborn old man, who lost friendships and family. Haunted by his mistakes and regrets, but too proud to accept them. He was experiencing a real identity crisis in relation to his community and his mortality but wrapped up in Christmas paper.
In Old English, the word Scrooge means 'to squeeze'. This is exactly what he did through the story. He denied his employee, Bob Cratchit time off for Christmas and paid the man very meagre wages, giving no festive bonus for his poor family. However, this conflicted help-stone, the sharp, hard flint of a man, did not start out this way.
From the solitude of his house, he hears the city celebrating outside and denies the sentiment, bah humbug! Apart from his wealth, biased recollection is his only comfort. Scrooge is not the person he thinks he is, but instead, a self-justified persona based on his own poor reasoning. The three ghosts are polished and fanciful in the Novella and T.V productions for entertainment purposes, but; on a more realistic note, what Dickens described here is a man re-discovering who he really is, salvaging life!
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