One-Purpose Characters

[Toby Frost]

A while ago, I was watching TV with a friend of mine. A new character was introduced in a drama: a talented, young, gay artist with a promising future ahead of him. My friend said "That guy will be dead within 15 minutes." He was right. I asked how he knew. My friend replied "Because that kind of guy always dies in this kind of story".

That's stuck in my mind, because it seems to me that, with a lot of bad characters, you can tell their function - and therefore their fate - really early on. These tend to be secondary characters whose purpose is to show something about another character. "Please protect us, sir," the helpless women and children beg, tears flowing down their innocent cheeks. "Of course," replies Lord Villainy. "You can stay in my castle - in the dungeons! Behold my evil!" Foolish peasants. You think they'd learn.

Sometimes, this is done for the sake of neatness. The rival suitor is rejected and dies heroically saving the others, so that nobody looks less than 100% happy at the victory celebrations. The villain realises his errors and then dies helping the good guys, because the conversation would be really awkward if he survived. Yes, but it would also be interesting.

The more subtle version of this is for a character to move from one function to another as the story goes on, but always keeping within some form of cliche: from Innocent Princess to Damsel in Distress and then Kickass Warrior Babe, for instance. I can't see that this is necessarily a bad thing - a lot of characters change role - but if it's clumsy, it's really obvious.

Then again, a lot of stories have the same shape for good reasons. Humans seem to be wired to like certain shapes of story. But it can be interesting when Cheeky Sidekick doesn't die and send the hero on a quest for vengeance, or Grizzled Sarge turns out to collect modern art when not leading the charge (or not to be loveable, deep down, at all). Maybe this is the strength of the Martin/Abercrombie multiple-viewpoint approach: every main character considers himself the hero of his own story, and so every time the lead character changes, so do the roles of the people around him/her.

Does anyone else find this?

 

[Mouse]

Yep. I watched the pilot ep of The 100 when it was on TV on Monday (I think it was Monday) and Main MC Dude and Main MC Girl, along with Secondary Girl, go off on an adventure and invite along Two Random Dudes. Main MC Girl doesn't like Main MC Dude but he obviously likes her. He also likes Secondary Girl. Secondary Girl almost gets eaten by Giant River Monster. Instead of Main MC Dude saving her, one of Two Random Dudes decides to instead. Secondary Girl now seems more interested in her hero rather than Main MC Dude who, obviously, will be hooking up with Main MC girl. As soon as that happened, I knew the poor randomer was doomed. Ten minutes later, one of Two Random Dudes was dead.

 

[tinkerdan]

It seems to be the matter of upping the stakes for certain types of fiction. In the adventure someone must die. Star Trek had their famous red shirt that eventually became the butt of many jokes. So this has been around for a long time. But that 's only the disposable character and the latter part of the OP here seems to start to wander into other single purpose characters that don't necessarily have to die.

In the same way there is almost a reversal of this that creates it's own tension within the story. There are many movies that involve the someone must die paradigm and then introduce the perfect candidate[usually someone so abrasive everyone wants him dead]and then they proceed to one by one kill off the other characters leaving the audience in suspense over whether the obnoxious one that should die will actually make it through the whole thing.

 

[Toby Frost]

Yes, slasher films are the classic example of people you know won't survive until the end. But I'm thinking more of the characters who are there to make the good guy look good and the bad guy bad. They are, effectively, part of the furniture, and will be ignored as soon as they've served their purpose.

Part of the problem with all these things, I think, is that after a while you start to spot it. When Lord Evil addresses the terrified villagers, you know that he's going to do something to show that he's eeevil, possibly involving his private parts these days, and that the villagers exist solely to prove the point. You might as well imagine your own eeevil deed and skip to the end of the scene. I was re-reading Memory, Sorrow and Thorn recently, and was impressed at how three-dimensional everybody seems in it. Even characters who do serve an obvious purpose seem like real people with personalities and objectives that go beyond what happens to them in the story.

 

[Mark R]

I think this is just a natural consequence of experience with any art form. You can't help but see the moving parts. It's the reason Stewart Lee is popular with people who love comedy and Cezanne enjoyed a following among lovers of fine art. Awareness of the tropes and mechanics means you can play with the preconceptions of an informed audience and delight them further, but for the uninitiated this is confusing. TV is almost always made for a mass audience and thus will rarely venture into playing with its own limitations as an art form (aside from a rather grinding vogue in the 90s for 4th wall breaks from the main character).

So yes I often notice aspects of films and television where a character simply fulfils an obvious function and this decides his or her fate, but to be honest I almost never mind this. Sometimes it's quite beautifully done. I think it's important to acknowledge that the people writing these characters are fully aware of what they're doing and they do so for good reasons.

Lastly, as is quite often the case with things written by Toby, I laughed out loud at certain parts, particularly this:

"Of course," replies Lord Villainy. "You can stay in my castle - in the dungeons! Behold my evil!"

It's quite likely I will steal the above in the near future, let me know what royalties are necessary

 

[Tyburn]

This reminds me of a conversation I had with my now-wife the first night we met, sitting around watching late-night television and talking. An old WWII movie was on and we started ripping into it with abandon.
"Oh when this darn war's over I'm going to buy a nice little farm somewhere and settle down..." - Dead in the next scene.
"I had this idea of opening a chain of restaurants..." - Dead by the next reel.
"I'm gonna have lots of babies..." - Falls groin-first onto a landmine.

That last one lead to an in-joke between us about testicular landmines, by the way.

 

[Toby Frost]

That reminds me in a scene in the comedy Black Dynamite, where a group of heroes are on a mission. One starts to talk about how he will settle down with his girlfriend and is suddenly shot by a sniper. "Who saw that coming?" the hero cries. "I mean, who saw where that came from?"

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

It's not just the obvious who's going to die characters - and yes Star Trek with Kirk was famous for the deaths of the landing parties. Everyone who went down on the damned planet with him if it wasn't one of the big three was a dead man walking.

But it's also the killers - killing as if to prove just how evil they are to the audience. That was one of the oh so many things I hated about the new "Tomorrow People" - and I stuck it out for a whole three episodes. But by then it was obvious - uncle whatever was going to keep killing because he had to keep showing the viewers what a terrible person he was. It was simply too stupid for words.

Cheers, Greg.