Quit Supersizing Our Stories and Characters: A Plea For Normalcy

"Oh, I could totally turn this character into
 a 2000 page trilogy," -Nerds everywhere.

The American story, whether it is a movie, a book, a play, or a television series is nearing the point of irrelevancy.  It's almost as if the people growing up playing Magic the Gathering and Pokemon cards have become the storytellers of this era.  And I don't know if that's more an indictment on us as an audience, or the state of writing, but I'm getting tired of it.

It's always supernatural plots, and alien abductions, and vampire love interests, and sadomastic sex scenes, and pagan rituals, and mind-blowing plot twists.  It's all a little extreme.  Our national pastime used to be baseball. If that wasn't violent enough, one could always go to a boxing match.   But now, we like extreme outdoor sports and ultimate warrior fights where broken bones and blood are as common as swearing in the stands.  It's not just that we as a nation are growing more diverse, that's obvious, it's that we are growing in extremes as to what is entertaining.

Leo DiCaprio as Gatsby and Tobey Maguire
as Nick?  Not this time Hollywood.  

And that is sad for the story.  The Great Gatsby, one of my all time favorite novels, is getting ready for its 5th rendition in front of a cinema audience, and I can already say, even though it will probably win an Oscar or two, is that it will be a commercial failure.  Why?  Because it's too normal.  If you think about the plot: a poor guy goes off to war, comes home and realizes his girl is married to an ultra rich guy, goes out and gets himself filthy rich, impresses people until girl finally notices him, steals girl away, a tragedy happens, followed by misdirected vengeance...it isn't a simple plot.  But it has the allusion of normal.  And Americans are not fans of normal.

We want our characters super-sized.  We want them to have special powers, or gifts and talents so beyond what is normal, that we would call them exceptional.  We want them to be overly heroic, and patriotic, and selfless, and good looking, and freakishly strange in a delightful manner. We want our heroes to act cool like James Bond, be quirky like Fox Maulder, look like Channing Tatum, and be as unconsciously dangerous as Jason Bourne.  In short, we want everything about our heroes to be unbelievable. We want these heroes to face innumerable forces of horrible evil.  We want that evil to be slightly likable, but so appalling that it must be exterminated.  Again, unbelievable.

Of the top 30 grossing movies last year, only one could be considered a normal plot;  The Help.  Some might consider The Hangover 2, or Bridesmaids, or Just Go With It, as normal plots, but I would argue those are all farcical caricatures of idealized scenarios. Basically, those are daydreamed fantasies of unhappy people.  And Adam Sandler is so past normalcy, both in plot points and acting acumen, that his movies now irritate me.  It was cute and funny when you were twenty, Adam, but reenacting Billy Madison into every movie as a mid-forty-year-old is possibly a form of mental illness.

Of the other 26 movies, we have five superhero stories, another two have vampires, two have aliens, Harry Potter the child wizard, a drunken mystical pirate, ghosts, Tom Cruise as a super spy, and in illustrated form, a talking: cat, bird, Smurf, car, panda, chipmunk, and whatever Rango was supposed to be.  This is our entertainment.

Somebody green lit this
movie?  Are we as
audiences, this dumb?  

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with bizarre and fantastical.  Heck, I grew up on Disney movies. I love the magic of imagination, and talking animals. But when is it too much. What about reality?

Are we so sick of reality, that we have to watch bizarre versions of it on television, and hope it doesn't rear its ugly head in a book or film?  Are we unable to look at characters that resemble our own family and friends and think about plots that could actually happen and how we would respond?  Is the role of entertainment only to get us outside our own existence and forget about our miserable experiences?  No.  Shouldn't art imitate life?  I love Batman, but I will never don a pointed hat and seek out criminals in the streets.  Is he a damaged human being, like we all are?  Of course.  But can any of us who have lost a parent due to an act of violence, like Bruce Wayne did, go out and become a vigilante?  Of course not.

#38 for gross revenue in 2011 was this
gem.  Real, interesting characters,
dealing with real life issues.  Of course,
it was a novel before it was a movie.  

So I'm wondering what we are learning by all these fantastical stories and horrific plots?  That we still fear scary things, like in Paranormal Activity 14?  When students ask what my book is about, I always lie and say it's called "Normal Activity."  It just follows a guy around as he goes to work for two weeks and nothing happens.  I don't know why I tell them this story, probably because I have some unconscious motive to stymie any excitement around my unpublished book, or because it's hard to tell them the real plot.  That it's partially autobiographical.  That it covers three years of my life and experiences, and how real, but sad events, nearly destroyed me as a person, and did destroy the life of someone I cared about deeply back then.  Real life stuff.  Stuff we don't like talking about.  Stuff that brings up emotions, and is identifiable, and hard to deal with.  Real life is hard to deal with, and yet there is no examples of people acting rationally or irrationally to learn from in entertainment form.  Which is why it's hard to open up to a student and be real, when I'm supposed to be this bastion of professionalism. Additionally, I don't want them to say, "it sounds boring, aren't there any paraplegic satyrs or naked warlocks or bloodthirsty fairy unicorns in it?"  NO! No there's not!  Believe it or not, some stories are about real people responding to real situations in the midst of difficult circumstances, and those decisions define who we are, and where we're going!

And it's hard to jot down in a three paragraph query letter in a way that will blow an agent or publisher away.  I'm not a writing virgin: I know about hooks, teases, and wetting the appetite of a reader.  But when you have less than a page to interest a potential buyer, and you say your book is about real characters who respond to ugly situations that define who they are, about the rise and fall of humanity through humor, emotions, and basic spirituality, well, I can see why they reject it.  Yes, it captures the reality of life, in all its glorious and sickening moments, but is that something we want to read about?  A few agents have said they love the writing and the storytelling, but how do you market the "normalcy of real life?"  It would be a tough sell, they say.  Maybe I should just add a zombie-alien and an amish-pilgrim-ghost to get it exciting.  But this is not how I want to sell out.

Sad.  Sad that we have no market for real characters and normal plots.  Sad that today's youth will not see versions of itself and reality recreated on screen or in novels to learn from.  Sad that our heroes wear masks and seduce women in droves and have arsenals of weapons, but little to no actual character.   Sad that characters like Jay Gatsby, or Scout Finch, or Bob Newhart, or anyone from Little House on the Praire, would be classified as too safe and boring for audiences today.

Maybe I'm just weird.  Maybe the fact that I connect to characters like George from Of Mice and Men, or Jayne Eyre, or Fraiser Crane on television, characters who for lack of better terms, are fairly basic, is a sign that I'm too normal and boring.  But I think there is real depth in their normalcy, a depth that readers and viewers connect to.  And maybe as readers, viewers, and appreciators of art, we need to refocus on what a real character is, and get away from this fantastical fairy-topia of imagination and realize that real heroes look like you and me, they just happen to make the right decisions at the most difficult times. I think that's something we all can strive for and achieve, and something we can all respect in a character in a book or on TV.