C. IN YOUR CREATIONS
Inner Drives Center of Motivation – Root: killer instinct, & Lower Solar Plexus: selfish power mongering.
Show early fascination with the way bodies and life work: some kids who pull wings off insects become entomologists; others become serial killers.
In the setup, is the kid repulsed by or drawn to violence? What changes that, or what increases the appeal?
How is the average inborn conscience quelled or trained? Show childhood’s instinctive cruelty slowly tempered by the acquisition of empathy, often from observing and understanding the pain of pets or close friends.
A child possessed by demons is of course another story, and you could include the true self fighting to take back control or slowly giving up.
Today’s justice system wrestles with appropriate trial, punishment, and rehabilitation for young killers. Explore the anguish and confusion on all sides.
EVIL TWINS
Angel on one shoulder, devil on the other? Most mythologies include a set of twins to signify this aspect of individual personalities, as well as the duality of existence: day-night, hot-cold, life-death, etc.
The twins needn’t be actual twins, but there needs be some unifying foundation of ideology, profession, gender, etc. from which they can go in diverse directions, like the Bible’s Cain and Abel, or Greek mythology’s Prometheus (who brought fire to humans) and his brother Epimetheus (who brought Pandora’s Box).
CHARACTERISTICS
Dualities, polarities, oppositions. Sense of incompleteness if alone. Envy of those who seem whole. Searching. Selectiveness… few are worthy, fewer still are chosen. Sentences could trail off, as though waiting for someone else to finish them.
A. IN ACTION
Part truth, part legend, the Mesopotamian story of arrogant, sophisticated, womanizing king Gilgamesh and Enkidu, the gentle, naïve, animal-loving man of the wilderness, is one of the oldest twin tales and buddy stories. It pits city against countryside, vain against humble. In they end they become fast friends, symbolizing the integrated personality.
In psychology, our doppelganger (ghost twin of self) often lives out our Shadow selves and the goal is to integrate the two.
B. IN MEDIA
In Oscar Wilde’s Portrait of Dorian Gray, the character’s evil twin is embodied in a painting that ages and shows all his sins, while he stays young and handsome, until.…
Spencer Tracy and Ingrid Bergman star in the noir thriller Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, an excellent excursion into evil twin territory. Also see Bette Davis in Dead Ringer and Jeremy Irons in Dead Ringers. The anime movie Spirited Away features old lady witch twins, one evil and one kind.
In Neil Gaiman’s novel Anansi Boys, a young man is reunited with his magical twin-self. The Man in the Iron Mask is about an evil king with a good twin locked away, and what happens when he’s freed. In Dave, Kevin Kline poses the same situation around the U.S. Presidency.
In Terminator 2, Schwarzenegger’s formerly bad Terminator is now a good guy fighting his evil twin machine. In the brutally defeatist Fight Club, Brad Pitt is Edward Norton’s other half, but we don’t find that out until the end of the film.
C. IN YOUR CREATIONS
Inner Drives Centers of Motivation – any of them, in their dualities.
Range across the sliding scale of a quality: begin your twins as indifferent slackers, then turn one into a pacifist and the other into a gung-ho soldier. Or start them both gung-ho and move one towards indifference and the other to pacifist.
If you go far enough in one direction you end up where you started. Show how one twin tries so hard to be unlike the other that they actually end up being alike.
Twins trading places makes intriguing psychological drama: the weak one becomes stronger as the strong one weakens, the shy one becomes extroverted as the show-off retreats, etc.
As in Heat, starring cop Al Pacino and robber Robert De Niro, show the core driver that unites two opponents. For those two, it is the intellectual challenge and the thrill of the chase.
PIRATES, REBELS, AND TRAITORS
As opposed to antiheroes who uphold some idealism, these rogues are just plain bad. If they ever had any faith in themselves or others, they’ve lost it. They’re determined to destroy the system. Sometimes they think they’re doing the right thing, but seldom for the greater good.
Some people are simply so contrary that no matter what’s going on, they’re going to be against it. As James Dean drawled in Rebel Without A Cause when asked what he was against, “What’d’ya got?” Neuroscience now locates this contrarian tendency in the brain’s cingulate system; wags would say it’s located at the bottom end of the digestive tract.
CHARACTERISTICS
Selfish. Disdain for the system and determination to take advantage of it. Addicted to adrenalin. Physical courage or simply not caring whether they live or die. Angry or the other extreme, indifferent. Using violence and fear to try to feel something… anything. Often self-destructive; they simply don’t give a hoot about themselves or anyone else. Though spiritual teachings says there’s Light inside everyone, you’d be hard pressed to find any in these people, they’ve done such a good job of covering it over with Darkness.
A. IN ACTION
Piracy has a long bloody history and continues today, particularly in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. Mercenaries fight in most wars, from Xenophon’s Greeks at the Battle of Cunaxa, to German Hessians in the American Revolution, to Blackwater mercs in the early 2000s Iraq War.
One man’s rebel is another’s freedom fighter. We’re talking about people who rebel just for the heck of it and go where the fighting is. When peace is made, they hire themselves out to fight another war.
Who gets called traitor depends on what side of the question you’re on. For her actions during the Vietnam War, Jane Fonda is a heroine to anti-war protestors, but a traitor to others. Traitors in espionage agencies can expose colleagues to death and their countries to great damage. In many countries, including the U.S., the punishment for treason is death.
B. IN MEDIA
Pirate stories: Peter Pan’s nemesis Captain Hook was understandably upset about losing a hand to the crocodile, but he was a rough character way before that.
Judas of the Bible’s New Testament used to be an icon of the traitor until the Gospel of Judas was discovered. As logic has always dictated, Judas sacrificed himself and his reputation to bring about Jesus’ crucifixion. Without him the whole thing couldn’t have happened, so is he a traitor or a trusted aide?
Ed Harris plays an amoral rebel-for-hire in the film Under Fire, about photojournalists and mercenaries in Nicaragua.
Season five of the counter-terrorist TV series 24 had traitors-within-traitors nested within the plot like Russian dolls, all the way to the U.S. President. One or two thought they had noble motives, but a scratch beneath the surface of most revealed personal gain as the driver.
John Le Carre’s novels and the movies made from them delve into the multifaceted world of spy and counterspy. Most James Bond films combine pirates, rebels, and traitors with lots of trick machines and glamorous girls.
C. IN YOUR CREATIONS
Inner Drives Center of Motivation – Lower Solar Plexus: selfishness, & Root: death-dealing.
Show a character’s fascination with destruction; how did it begin?
Go against stereotypes and give this character an opportunity for redemption.
Show the mental path that convinced them of the meaninglessness of existence and the stupidity of humans; show how they’ve emotionally devolved into that give-a-sht grace that lets people dodge bullets and death… for a while.
Explore the addiction of action: show your character trying to settle down. How successful is that? Who does it affect, how?
Expand on the psychological idea that these types actually want to be punished.
Did you believe Anakin Skywalker’s conversion to Darth Vader? Was it in him all along? Was it
too contrived? Write some new pivotal scenes showing his devolvement, then tweak it for your own unique character.
BAD COP, WORSE COP
Travel to any third world country and you’ll be paying extra to uniformed men for “extra service.” Sometimes it’s just a hassle, other times I’ve found the point of a gun makes the point that it’s better to just pay the “tax” rather than arguing about it. From petty corruption to murder and mayhem, those who police the populace too often need policing. It’s that power thing again, corrupting those who hold it.
CHARACTERISTICS
Cocky, swaggering. Love the uniforms, the guns, the medals, the machines. Competitive. Have a daddy-knows-best attitude towards the populace, but resent the powers over them. Disgusted with the bad and sad people they deal with on the streets. On constant alert, they see danger everywhere and are always ready for it.
A. IN ACTION
The bad-cop syndrome seems such an organic thing, there’s usually a specific police department to deal with the downside of it. Internal Affairs is supposed to police the police, but as the film Internal Affairs shows, it doesn’t always work.
To discourage corruption in Singapore, most public officials make more money than the U.S. Congress. Plus, any corruption is severely punished.
Those “stinking badges” from Treasure of Sierra Madre that the bad guys said they didn’t need? A filmmaker friend traveling in the Philippines once flashed a badge to get past security hassles and onto his plane. The badge was from a Warner Brothers music video and featured Bugs Bunny. No matter, unless you look closely, a badge is a badge is a badge.
B. IN MEDIA
Our fascination with power gone bad has produced many fine bad-cop films: Prince of the City, Internal Affairs, LA Confidential, and Bad Lieutenant, where Harvey Keitel confronts redemption through a haze of addictions. In Training Day an idealistic young cop confronts the less-than-ethical methods his mentor uses to fight evil.
The Oscar-winning Crash is a window on the slippery slope of good cop, bad cop, worse cop.
TV series dealing with this archetype are exceptionally popular, such as the Law and Order franchise, NYPD Blue, and The Wire.
Prison guards are stationary cops, wading in the muck of prisoners’ failure, hatred, and frustration. The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and Monster’s Ball offer portrayals of this type of cop.
C. IN YOUR CREATIONS
Inner Drives Center of Motivation - Lower Solar Plexus: personal power over others, & Sacral: sex, money, and fear as indulgences and as power tools over others.
Greed and distorted personal power have corrupted these characters. Show us this process anywhere along the line and you’ll be tapping into a major human tendency.
Do a ride-along with your local cops. Visit a jail or prison.
Show the progress of a cop going from initial compassion and a sense of order to disappointment and hopelessness.
Use order or the lack thereof in her personal life to either contrast or support the sense of order in the cop’s professional life.
Take us back to the early times when they lacked power and decided to never feel that way again. What roads to power did they not go down and why?
Show how keeping-up-with-the-Joneses can become a downward spiral of illegal and immoral actions.
BUMBLERS
One reason the Mystery Schools are secret is because a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. You don’t turn the steering wheel over to a toddler, give a machine gun to an eight year old, or hand the security code for the nukes to the physics freshman. Well, some do… and that makes for tense stories, since chaos is bound to ensue.
Bumblers can be a foil for the hero, a sharp contrast to his abilities. They’re also an immediate opportunity for the hero to demonstrate tolerance and helpfulness, thus enhancing his esteem.
CHARACTERISTICS
Cocky. Self-assured. Entitled. Doesn’t listen to others. Brags. Looks down on others. Blind to their own mistakes.
Cheery to the point of nausea, helpful to the point of harmful.
Or the other extreme: shy, inept, tries to hide, mumbles, fearful, clumsy.
A. IN ACTION
In business theory this is the Peter Principle, where a person rises to their level of incompetence.
Empires are often headed by Bumblers who’re puppets of the real power players. It’s common in dynasties where a bloodline rather than brain power gets you the office. Cleopatra’s younger brother is a tragic example.
Manipulators keep their own hands clean by getting Bumblers to pull the trigger and be the fall guy for all sorts of badness, from simple extortion to assassinations, as some suppose with Lee Harvey Oswald killing President Kennedy and Sirhan Sirhan killing Robert Kennedy.
Sometimes sins of omission are just as bad as sins of commission. Those who do nothing and allow Evil to thrive are judged just as guilty as those who help it along.
In casting, this is the Producer’s Girlfriend factor — the well-connected person who really can’t perform.
B. IN MEDIA
Situation comedies rely on this type for plot drivers: their mistakes set up the situation, their bumbling supplies the comedy. The Dilbert cartoon strip pits competent Dilbert against an office full of Bumblers; Bumbler bosses Ricky Gervais and Steve Carell of The Office TV series try everyone’s patience.
Fox TV 24’s superagent Jack Bauer ices loads of unwary Bumblers every episode. These people are usually led by others to think they’re doing the wrong thing for the right reason, such as nuking LA to make us safer.
Mickey Mouse in Fantasia’s “Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” Billy Bob Thornton’s Bad Santa, River Phoenix in My Own Private Idaho, and Stan Laurel of the old comedy team Laurel and Hardy are variants of this archetype. They turn ineffectiveness into an art and bumble their way to comedy or tragedy. They’re fascinating the way a train wreck is fascinating. Peter Falk’s Detective Columbo used this archetype as a cover for his cleverness.
C. IN YOUR CREATIONS
Inner Drives Center of Motivation – Throat: faulty, never thinking things through, & Lower Solar Plexus: unwarranted confidence, or wimpy lack of confidence.
Follow Murphy’s Law: Anything that can go wrong, will.
Why do these people think they’re so great? Who lied to them? Their mommas? A yes-man?
What happens when their incompetencies are revealed? Do they get angry? Deny it? Collapse?
Show a wimp rising to the occasion. Can they stay there after the emergency, or is the power too strong for them?
Show what happens if others refuse to enable a Bumbler. If in combat, will they die? If in business, go broke?
Have your heroine develop a doofus detector (instinct, pointed questions, trials, etc.) over the course of the story so she eventually learns to avoid Bumblers.
DICTATORS, TYRANTS,
AND CULT LEADERS
These people are alpha male types gone mad and really bad. Societies in weakness or disarray often look to a strong man (sometimes woman) for leadership. Herd instinct kicks in and an individual rises to meet the need.
CHARACTERISTICS
Charismatic. Clever. Proud. Arrogant. Insensitive. Intuitive. Exude a sense confidence and power. They’ll lock gazes with you (you’re the deer in the headlights) and speak hypnotically. Often sexually voracious. Ruthless and slightly, or maybe totally, mad.
A. IN ACTION
Read history, watch The History Channel, and check out current events.
After the first Gulf War, many wondered why the first President Bush left Saddam in power. One of the reasons is now painfully obvious. Power, like nature, abhors a vacuum. A dictator is a stabilizing force, and it’s much easier to cut deals with focused brutality than with anarchy.
Cult leaders are like dark whirlpools, fascinating, hypnotic, and deadly. They usually control their followers through sex, money, and fear, using the latter to intimidate them into giving them the first two. At Jim Jones�
� People’s Temple in Guyana you also got to drink the Kool-Aid™, kill your kids, and die.
Creating a climate of fear requires making examples, so brutal tortures and deaths frequently surround these people, be it heads on poles, “disappeared” family, or massacres of entire settlements.
B. IN MEDIA
Read Percy Bisshe Shelley’s classic poem Ozymandius about the fate of a great tyrant.
Some see these types as emissaries of the Dark Brotherhood, here to promote fear and helplessness. Many fantasy stories, particularly from Asia, offer fascinating theories on how they came about and how to get rid of them.
Shakespeare’s Richard III is a wretched but very effective dictator, particularly as played by Ian McKellan in the 1995 movie.
An excellent study of this type of villain is Ian Richardson again, playing unscrupulous British Prime Minister Francis Urguhart (F.U.) in Michael Dobbs’s novels and the BBC series House of Cards.
In The Last King of Scotland Forest Whitaker portrays the charismatic mad dictator of Uganda, Idi Amin. Based on the Joseph Conrad novel Heart of Darkness, Marlon Brando’s Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now is a good man gone really bad from too much power.
C. IN YOUR CREATIONS
Power of the Dark Side Page 9
