ANALYZING CHARACTERS: CREATION, INTERPRETATION, AND CULTURAL CRITIQUE

Abstract

Why do we want or need to analyze fictional characters, at all? Why don’t we leave our understanding of characters up to individual intuitions and gut feelings? Or, phrased differently: What are the possible uses of systematical theories, methods, models, and categories for analyzing characters? In my paper, I will propose that there are at least three areas of practice where systematical theories to character analysis are put to different kinds of use: (1) creation, (2) interpretation, and (3) cultural critique of characters. In those contexts, nothing would be more practical than a good theory, like Béla Balázs famously said. However, the criteria for what makes a theory “good” or “useful” also depend on how it is to be used. To illustrate those kinds of questions, I will give a brief overview of my own model for analysing characters and indicate some of its possible uses, drawing primarily on film characters as examples. For instance, theoretically distinguishing between four general aspects of characters – as fictional beings, artifacts, symbols, and symptoms – may sometimes be helpful in all three areas of practice, albeit in different ways.