The Duality of Man

Film Noir showcases the duality of man like no other genre. As I write this post the whole Harvey Weinstein scandal has broken out. The film producer, Hollywood mogul, husband, father and philanthropist is on his knees. The exact same position he forced onto so many of his victims.

He's done tremendous evil. He's done tremendous good. He's an angel to some. The devil himself to others.

The most interesting fictional characters are complex. Multi-dimensional. Unconventional. We like it when, good or bad, they surprise us.  

There's two qualities that define our interest in the characters we see on screen: motivation and action.

When we see Superman save the cat from the tree we know he's a good guy. But what if he still saved the cat but at the expense of killing a puppy? What would we think of him then? Would his likeability be driven solely based on the audience's love or contempt towards either animal species? And who is more real, Superman or Clark Kent?

During the Victorian Era Freud introduced (to a wide audience) this idea of duality, of the id, of our inner subversions, frequently fighting within ourselves to see which will win. Then several decades later Picasso began to paint portraits of what looked like distorted, angular faces. Upon closer look, we can see that he'd paint both the front view and the side view of one human on one canvas. The portrait splits between beautiful and ugly with one tiny head tilt.

In classic noir, by plot point one, honorable men flip from good to bad. The usual motivation? The dame or the money. Or both. The action? Theft, murder or other even worse crime.

Whether the audience will root for or despise them all depends on our own lives, lessons and perspectives. If the writing was damn good, then we'd feel a myriad of emotions towards these men. Men like Walter White, who went by Heisenberg. Don Draper stole his identity because he no longer wanted to be Dick Whitman. Each had something to hide.

Each one of us has, at one point or another, behaved like the hero or like the villain. It all depended on motivation. And timing.

The characters in my script, they are all a mixed bag. For starters, they are all broken. Wounded. And unhappy. Most unhappiness stems from living a life of untruth. Either lying our way through life to others. Or worse. Living inauthentic lives because we can't handle our own truths. We all know the really bitter people. No mother gives birth to a bitter baby. Bitterness is the result of a long diet of untruths, disappointments, failures and betrayals.

I love my characters. While the story has evolved - dearly a decade of revisions will do that - the central characters have sat with me all this time, marinating, brewing and steeping in the spice of time and wisdom.

My goal is to introduce them all as different people living different lives - some men, some women, some younger, some older, some East Side white collar, some West side blue collar, some wealthy, some struggling, some married, some single - and in the end show them all to be on equal footing. Which means some will rise, some will fall, but no one will be in the same place where they began. That's the joy of the journey.

And unlike the real-life Hollywood shanda and the horrific damage he's done to generations of real women, the characters of my story are pure fiction. They are an escape from the brutal reality pumping thru our 24/7 daily news cycle. They all introduced themselves to me back in 2007 and they have refused to leave.

They knew I'd meet them on the other side of darkness. 



image: https://www.pinterest.com/egoagency/philosophy-series/