| | | | | | inform the audience of the fact; he must express it for himself through his words and deeds, his looks and tones." 46 Simplified for the movies, the idea is expressed as follows by Walter: the "characters' physical and emotional traits ought to grow from what they say and do. Their actions and dialogue define them. What they do and say is their character."47 This type of presentation, however, insinuates a rational link between self-made men and women and the actions they generate, a connection that becomes meaningful as well as explicit for the viewers. Nothing new here? After all, didn't Aristotle already associate tragedy with "men in action"? Didn't he also say that an "action is brought about by agents who necessarily display certain distinctive qualities both of character and of thought"?48 The Poetics have been marshaled many times to grant validity to today's strong movie characters, people who make things happen. As a result, we have learned to interpret in the movies "someone's actions by reference to his intentions, beliefs, desires, etc.''49 In my view, these forceful, self-determined, yet knowable characters sound more like bermenschen than regular human beings. As for the direct line that connects a person's will and an outcome of some kind, it too deserves more querying. | | | | | | | | | Working from different premises, a number of contemporary theorists have suggested that, far from originating from a stable, secure point of origin, personal identity is inevitably marred by loss, fragmentation, and the influence of culture. Certainly, one is aware of occupying the same body day after day and it is easy as a result to posit a distinct, autonomous, and constant self. Self-consciousness, however, should not automatically imply a rational, coherent, or permanent identity. Instead, the self may be marked by what exceeds it: the unknown in one's very core (the unconscious), the assumption of symbolic identity through the learning of language, and the endless influence of ideology insofar as it socially produces us through the regimes of gender, race, class, etc.50 | | | | | | | | | To start with, that which escapes us, the unconscious, is often represented, in popular culture in general and Hollywood movies in particular, as some kind of missing package that somehow failed to be delivered at the proper moment. Because of the lack of information contained in the brief, the character is in flux. With the help of the proper authorities | | | | |
