Five Characters Who Are Confused About Their Genre

The thing about most stories is that the characters don’t realize they’re in a story.  Yes, breaking or leaning on the fourth wall is a time-honored tradition in theater, television, and film (less so in books, though Stephen King shatters the fourth wall in The Dark Tower), but by and large, most stories are content to let their characters act organically within the terms of the imagined world.  This leads to a curious phenomenon where some characters still act like they’re in a story – after all, how many of us in real life sometimes act as if our life had a narrative? – but tragically, or hilariously, they’re wrong about the type of story they’re in.

Confused yet? Let me simplify.  Most characters don’t know they’re in a story, but some act like they’re in a story because they’re behaving as realistically as possible, and some real people act like they’re in a story.  So while they’re right that they’re in a story, they’re very often wrong about the nature of that story.  And that’s interesting.  Because in one sense they’re perceptive in that they act on narrative elements – tropes and conventions – but in another, they’re wrong because a story only works if the characters act in concordance with the rules set up by the author, even if there are larger narrative concerns that oh no I’ve gone cross-eyed.

Examples?  Examples.

*Spoilers ahead for Game of Thrones, The Man Who Knew Too Little, Deep Space Nine, The Game, and The Office

Sansa Stark thinks she’s living in Camelot; is wrong

That’s what Sansa Stark is all about at first.  Having seen/read the first scene with the Frozen Zombie Cannibal Warriors (or whatever) followed by the nice man getting his head chopped off for running away from them, you kind of have an idea that it’s not going to be a “sunshine and puppies” kind of series.  So Sansa pretty much comes off as unbelievably naive.  She seems to think she’s in an idealized fairytale romance.  Oops.  Turns out it’s more like this:

You can actually base an entire movie on this idea

Bill Murray thinks his brother has signed him up for a “Theater of Life” experience wherein he’ll take the role of a secret agent and actors will play out a hyper-realistic show where he’s the star.  Turns out, the inciting phone call gets mixed up, and he receives instructions intended for an actual spy. Hilarity ensues.

It’s an interesting take on the concept.  Murray’s character thinks he’s in a fictional encounter – which he’s not (but he is, because it’s a movie!), and he’s right about the genre, just wrong about the level of reality he’s supposed to be operating on.  It’s kind of a play on the entire concept of The Game, where Michael Douglas is convinced that the hyper-reality game his brother signed him up for doesn’t exist, and comes to believe a massive conspiracy is threatening his wealth and well-being.

So, Douglas is correct in that he’s in a tense, mysterious thriller – except the twist is that he’s in no danger at all and the whole thing is an elaborate A Christmas Carol-style ruse to get him to become a nice person again – but since the movie is told from his perspective, it’s a thriller.  So, is his character confused about the genre?  Answer: my brain hurts.

Sometimes, a character can use this to their advantage

If one character is exhibiting this phenomenon and another character realizes it, they can exploit it, usually with humorous results, but sometimes it can be played straight.  For example, Dwight from The Office basically lives his life like he’s a character on some kind of spy/supernatural mystery/cop procedural.  Jim takes frequent advantage of this to pull pranks on him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Amyc7EJpMf4

The key examples here are the beginning (Dwight thinks he lives in Back To The Future), 1:25 (Dwight thinks he’s the hero in a vampire movie) and 2:20 (Dwight thinks he’s in a mystery novel)

For a non-comedy example, look no further than Deep Space Nine.  The show’s protagonist, Captain Sisko, is hell-bent on capturing renegade Starfleet officer Michael Eddington, who turned his coat and joined the terrorist group The Maquis.  The two spar, both ship-to-ship and verbally.  After disabling Sisko’s Defiant, Eddington taunts him by giving him a copy of Les Misérables and comparing him to the novel’s villain, Inspector Javert.  Sisko is unable to best Eddington until he has the epiphany that Eddington sees himself as the good guy – the noble hero fighting the good fight, the underdog, the man of the people who rallies against an oppressive and corrupt government (there’s even a certain amount of truth to this; the Maquis are terrorists, but they’re protesting being kicked off of their home planets which the Federation ceded to another government in a treaty.)  So, what’s an upstanding Starfleet Captain to do?  Why, become the villain, of course:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArqVAlgRENk

By embracing the role that Eddington cast for him, he forces Eddington into the most heroic of acts: the noble sacrifice.

The original, and further explorations

To see us out, let’s give a minute of appreciation to a character who basically lived this trope.  It was never clear exactly what genre he thought he was in, but whatever it was, in his own mind, he was pretty much the king of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eo_VZWpaP-g

I admit that the show didn’t do a lot for me, but man, you’ve got to appreciate its consistency.  Yet again, I seem to be light on female examples of the subject of my articles – this time Sansa Stark is the lone contributor.  Anyone want to help me out?