Another axiom questioned
Aug. 20th, 2008 07:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khiemtranI used to think it was axiomatic that what I liked was stories full of smart characters - intelligent protagonists, wise mentors, rational villains. It was just as certain that what I couldn't stand was stupidity in characters.
I've come to realize that's not true at all now. Sometimes it's the illogical characters and flawed thinkers who are the most compelling of all.
Part of it, is no doubt coming to realize with age just how great a capacity we all have to have be stupid. Just as we can be amazingly smart in some fields, we can be staggeringly clumsy in others. While the Golden Age SF I grew up with had smart people effortlessly pooling their knowledge to build starships, the reality I grew into turned out to be filled with all sorts of defective committees, social misfits and the madness of groupthink and lazy thought. Likewise, it turned out that downright sociopaths and people with other personality flaws really did make it into positions of power, whether over nations or over the single luckless worker lowly enough to be outranked by them - and then ended up being more scary than both "plausible" villains driven by circumstance and the cardboard cut out archetypes the new enlightened villains were supposed to replace.
Part of it, also, is coming to realize there's an art to writing sympathetic "stupid" characters, and an annoyingly stupid one is more likely to be a failing on the part of the author than on the character. It's worth noting that many of so called serious literature are virtually filled with clowns, yet the thing they're portraying is us. It works because deep down, that's what we all are, struggling heroically with what we've got. And the funny thing is, we'll all still be building starships.
I've come to realize that's not true at all now. Sometimes it's the illogical characters and flawed thinkers who are the most compelling of all.
Part of it, is no doubt coming to realize with age just how great a capacity we all have to have be stupid. Just as we can be amazingly smart in some fields, we can be staggeringly clumsy in others. While the Golden Age SF I grew up with had smart people effortlessly pooling their knowledge to build starships, the reality I grew into turned out to be filled with all sorts of defective committees, social misfits and the madness of groupthink and lazy thought. Likewise, it turned out that downright sociopaths and people with other personality flaws really did make it into positions of power, whether over nations or over the single luckless worker lowly enough to be outranked by them - and then ended up being more scary than both "plausible" villains driven by circumstance and the cardboard cut out archetypes the new enlightened villains were supposed to replace.
Part of it, also, is coming to realize there's an art to writing sympathetic "stupid" characters, and an annoyingly stupid one is more likely to be a failing on the part of the author than on the character. It's worth noting that many of so called serious literature are virtually filled with clowns, yet the thing they're portraying is us. It works because deep down, that's what we all are, struggling heroically with what we've got. And the funny thing is, we'll all still be building starships.
