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WHY KIRK IS MYTHIC AND PICARD IS NOT Guest Blog by Sarah Beach

Colleen Doran — Wed, 20 May 2009 23:59:37 +0000

With the arrival of the new STAR TREK movie, the natures of the various characters of the STAR TREK universe have become ripe for new discussions. Fans of NEXT GENERATION have often bickered with fans of the Original Series as to whether Kirk or Picard is the better Captain. There are fans who prefer DEEP SPACE 9 over VOYAGER. There are even (though I’m not sure why) fans of ENTERPRISE. I’m not trying to set up an argument about which series is better, particularly not between the Original Series and NEXT GENERATION. And I am certainly not out to say that of the two series a person should prefer one series over the other. But…. On the most basic level, Kirk has become a mythic figure while Picard remains just the Leader-Hero of a series of stories. Let’s start with the points where Kirk and Picard are similar. Both are Starship Captains (Kirk’s later rank of Admiral is beside the point), who command considerable respect from their crews. They are both highly competent at their jobs. These qualitites make them both worthy of our attention as the heroes of their cycles of stories. So what makes the difference? Kirk is brash, roguish, not by-the-book; he is passionate, unconventional and egotistical. Picard is controlled, precise, knows protocol backward and forward; he is committed, but emotionally reserved, and although he has a strong ego, he is not the egotist Kirk is. Is there enough in those characteristics to justify my saying Kirk is mythic and Picard is not? There are several archetypes which can bulk up a character to mythic stature. Because the archetypes are present in even ordinary characters, it is not the simple presence of a type which make one mythic. It is the particular mix of types and the importance of the character in the story. For starters then, we can agree that both Kirk and Picard are important for their stories. They are, basically, the archetype of the Hero, the central character. That of itself will not elevate either to the level of mythic figure. They are both also leaders, what I have labeled as Rulers (in my book THE SCRIBBLER’S GUIDE TO THE LAND OF MYTH). As Rulers, they frequently make judgements of their followers and of others they encounter, making decisions about what should happen. Again, these are qualities found in many core characters and are not quite enough to boost either into the realm of mythic figures. It is the next level of characteristics that starts putting distance between the characters. In addition to the ruler, one of a secondary set of character archetypes I developed is the one I call the Transformer. The Transformer is one who makes things change, often by his actions, but also simply by being who he is in a particular setting. Things change around a Transformer, simply because he is there, whether by his actions or not. This is where Kirk starts to edge out Picard. Yes, there are stories where Picard works a change in circumstances, but it is usually not because he wants to change things or even because he is merely present. Picard often starts from a position of attempting to preserve the status quo. In part, because the writers wanted to take a different approach with NEXT GENERATION, Picard frequently tries to abide by the Federation Prime Directive (of non-interference with other cultures). Kirk, on the other hand, is a natural walking disruptive force. His entrance to a scene changes the balance immediately. Things happen around him, becausehe is there. If Picard walks into a scene something might happen, but there is no certainty. If Kirk walks into a scene something definitely will happen. Still, is that enough to elevate Kirk to mythic stature? Perhaps not. There is, however, one final element that completes the tipping of the scale. Of the seven traditional character archetypes (Hero, Mentor, Threshold Guardian, Herald, Shapeshifter, Shadow and Trickster), it is the Trickster who frequently acts as the Culture Hero in a society. Although the Trickster is often the smaller creature who has to find ways of besting larger adversaries, it is just those qualities that help Mythic Tricksters establish their cultures. For instance, the Polynesian Trickster Maui drew islands up out of the ocean floor for humans to live on, and he slowed down the sun so humans would have more time to do things. Of course, not all Tricksters come with the positive baggage of being a Culture Hero. Loki, of Norse mythology, is a malignant force, always trying to undercut the gods of Asgard. He is destructive and malevolent. This is where Kirk leaves Picard in the dust. Picard is the chess player, each move calculated and according to prescribed rules. Kirk is the poker player, who will outbluff his opponent even while holding a losing hand. The “only cadet to beat the Kobayashi Maru scenario.” The one who can be beaten down but not defeated. He will always look for the better alternative, even if it is not obvious. It comes down to the question of “Which one would you chose to save the world?” Many want to say Picard, because he is indeed a sterling character and worthy of admiration. But, if it is necessary to throw off convention to “save the day,” if it is necessary to leap blindly to get to the goal first, who do you look to? For one of these two, those sorts of actions are at the very core of his being and for the other it is not. In the race to save the crew, the world, the universe, it is James Tiberius Kirk for the win. And that is what makes Kirk mythic. Sarah’s previous guest blog entitled “Says the Screenwriter, Writing a Graphic Novel is Easy!” can be found here. About Sarah: Born to the rolling landscape of Michigan, I got transplanted to the flat coastal plains of Houston, Texas when I was 16. Retreating from the world (at least as much as an extrovert is capable of that), I began working on my writing during endless hours. Artwork continued to be an important recreation. Along the way, I earned a Bachelor’s and Master’s in English, and became a medieval scholar. However, Academia was not my cup of tea, so I eventually moved on to the entertainment business (and the mountains of Los Angeles). After 18 years of doing fact-checking for Jeopardy!, I’m now back to immersing myself in my own writing. And even the recreational artwork is coming back. In the midst of all that, I labored and brought forth THE SCRIBBLER’S GUIDE TO THE LAND OF MYTH, which involved four years of writing, research, and review of over 150 films and television episodes. The website for the book is here. My personal website devoted to broader writing interests can be found at Scribblerworks. Entire contents of this post copyright 2009 by Sarah Beach. Used with permission.

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Guest Blog: Julie Ditrich on Unlocking and Accessing the Darkness Within: 7 Keys for Comics Creators

Colleen Doran — Sat, 16 May 2009 13:28:05 +0000

[WARNING: Some comics, film and book plot spoilers ahead!] “Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.” Stephen King A few weeks ago at Australia’s Supanova (Brisbane) pop culture convention, I had the privilege of meeting US comics creator Jhonen Vasquez whose satirical work Johnny the Homicidal Maniac I greatly admire. Despite the fact that I’m not usually drawn to creative properties with the words “homicidal” or “maniac” in the title or indeed ones that hint at or overtly promise great acts of depravity, my business partner and artist Jozef Szekeres persuaded me to read it and I’m very grateful to him for doing so. Vasquez’s portrait of insanity in the form of a deranged serial killer was not only convincing but, in my estimation, was a multi-layered and brilliantly executed tour-de-force. Johnny is not quite my idea of the quintessential anti-hero, as his methods of dispatching victims would make even Dexter cringe. Yet in his quieter insular moments Johnny possesses a modicum of self-awareness and displays moments of a kind of distorted sweetness as he strives to find the meaning of life and ultimately find out who he is. In the ten minutes I spent gushing to Vasquez about the impact of the work on me, I asked him a question I’d been wondering while reading the series: “Did you do a lot of research on profiling and the psychology of serial killers or is this all you?” Vasquez paused for a moment and with a glint in his eye, which could have been interpreted in any number of ways, confessed, “It all came from me.” Vasquez’s revealing admission got me thinking again about something I’ve been grappling with for a long time – when my personal internal and seemingly benign archetypes include the healer and the seeker amongst others and when the genres I traditionally work in are fantasy or visionary (metaphysical) fiction, how do I step outside of my emotional comfort zone and into the darker side of myself in order to channel it into creative works? Outside of resorting to chemical means such as drugs and alcohol and the subsequent cliché scenario of spiralling down into a psychologically disturbed oblivion brought on by childhood trauma, I’ve identified seven practical keys that have helped me create some of the darker characters and moments in my own fiction work and that of the upcoming Elf~Fin: Hyfus & Tilaweed comics series. These keys could prove useful for both comics writers and artists to harvest the darkness within and ultimately redirect it into their storytelling. Before we examine them, it’s important to discern the necessity of introducing darkness into your stories. The actual argument in favour of it is threefold: – Without going into abject darkness how can a character experience the light in forms such as love, joy and redemption, which invariably accompanies traditional happy-ending plots? – Without understanding the evil lengths an antagonist and his/her allies will go to in order to fulfil their objectives, how can we create obstacles and conflict for the protagonist’s journey? – And without these stark contrasts, how can we get readers/viewers to identify with the lead character/s and in the process give readers a visceral experience that evokes a large range of feelings and emotions (which is one of my success measurement tools about whether or not a work translates into a rich reading or filmic experience)? The reality is that outside of creating a fiction work for pure entertainment value, many of us choose to step into the darkness in our stories in order to challenge a society in denial and to expose controversial themes that in the past were commonly excised from our attention. The objective here is to introduce these issues not for titillation sake but to shine a spotlight on humanity’s evil-mongers and hopefully provide solutions and hope to the lost and forlorn spirits out there who relate to the characters and situations. Audiences and readers have also reached new levels of sophistication, and black-and-white portraits of good and evil just don’t cut it any more. Characters actually need to be multi-faceted. Some of the best examples of deep and complex characters I’ve come across in the last few years are on the television series Lost and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In comics and graphic novels, the aforementioned JtHM, as well as Neil Gaiman’s Sandman (the serial killer convention was quite extraordinary!) But getting back to the seven practical keys that can help you access multiple parts of yourself… (1) Personal Experience Dredging up traumatic or dysfunctional personal experiences and using them as the foundation for story and/or art is the most obvious key. Australian comics creators Christian Read and Paul Abstruse’s graphic novel WitchKing is a case in point. It’s a veritable blood bath. I cringed over entire sequences while reading it. Having said that, it’s also a stellar piece of writing and is quite brilliantly illustrated. At its very core it’s a story about chronic bullying and the aftermath – that is, what happens when a victim fights back against his perpetrators. When I talked recently to Paul Abstruse (whose body of illustrated comics work is characterised by dark themes) about how he approached the script he said he is usually attracted to the murkier stuff because it often parallels his own difficult upbringing. He related to the WitchKing material so much so that in his own eyes he became the embodiment of a tortured artist who descended into his own personal hell in order to channel those experiences onto the canvas. While working on the art, he specifically remembers recalling instances of his own anger, shame, and resentment, which echoed aspects of the script and, in turn, helped him endow the artwork with a powerful energy. Similarly, Colleen Doran’s graphic novel A Distant Soil (Volume II): The Ascendant offers up what I consider is the most shocking and confronting scene in the entire four volumes. It comes in the form of a ritual known as “The Choosing”. The Ovanon, she writes about, don’t believe children have souls until they go through a ceremony, whereupon adults in the upper echelons of the society’s hierarchy capriciously decide who is worthy of a soul and who is not. Children become disposable objects and in some cases are offered up for sexual gratification and profound physical and emotional abuse. Colleen didn’t directly experience the horror of this first hand, but during her childhood she witnessed several incidents that left an indelible impression on her psyche and gave her the starting point to explore these ideas in her story. At a very young age Colleen recognised that children – the most helpless and vulnerable people in our society – were not valued as fully fledged human beings and often underwent a kind of devaluation process. This even happened in the court system. Punishment meted out to the transgressors of physical and emotional abuse against children was less than that given to offenders who had abused adults. Children who could not articulate their pain and who had undergone horrific trauma were relegated to the roles of second-class citizens with no rights. In particular, Colleen witnessed an incident where a little girl who had been starved and tortured was wrested out of her abusive family situation only to be returned to the same family after she had sufficiently recovered. The family then picked up their bags and moved – never to be seen or heard of again – and Colleen has always wondered what happened to that little girl. Justice in this case was not served, and merely served to reinforce in young Colleen’s eyes that there seemed to be an habitual violation of children’s essential humanity. Your emotional reactions to traumatic events (or even seemingly minor injustices) are all fodder for your stories and characters. And for those of you who feel vulnerable and anxious about exposing too much – just remember that characters are actually composites/collages/patchwork quilts (all these synonyms and more). Writers rarely duplicate the living exactly, but usually borrow facets or idiosyncrasies of themselves and others, then add part research and then part imagination and sew all these pieces together like Doctor Frankenstein sews together body parts from various corpses to create his monster. Using personal experience can ultimately be therapeutic and cathartic – the act of reconstituting your own demons and darkness and channelling them into your characters can be liberating and healing. (2) Introspection and Self Analysis This key is closely linked to personal experience (mentioned above) but differs in the method – it’s a conscious and active process of getting to know yourself and releasing blocks that may impede or in fact shut down your creative facilities. This process often requires an element of detachment where you become an observer of your inner and outer life as it unfolds. You ultimately become a student of yourself. In the first instance, I encourage writers to experience various therapies to release negative repressed emotions that may be causing creative blocks, do psych tests such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator which identifies whether you’re an extrovert or introvert, are thinking or feeling oriented, intuitive or sensing, and perceiving or judging. Understand your archetypes (read Caroline Myss’s book Sacred Contracts for a comprehensive list) – these include advocate, warrior, rescuer, trickster and victim. Embrace the feminine and masculine traits you possess inside and identify how they manifest in your life. Examine your developmental journey through various ages. Strip away your barriers and lean into your authentic self so you can endow your characters with emotional honesty. If/when you experience emotions such as jealousy, obsession, rage, and resentment as a reaction to triggering incidents, ask yourself how you can translate them into words and pictures. Then ask yourself how characters could exhibit some of your personal characteristics, as well as traits that are alien to you, in various conflicts. Many creatives also talk about possessing a kind of split personality (not in the true sense of a Dissociative Identity Disorder but a disconnection nevertheless) – that is, they may find themselves participating in real life scenarios but also be observing (as if they’re outside themselves) at the same time. This observer part of them captures and imprints all the detail of the unfolding scene in their memory, and then, with a twist of the imagination, may play out that scene into several different takes with different resolutions. For example, a writer friend once told me that he cannot have an argument with his wife without his mind offering up several different simultaneously-dramatised scenarios about how the argument will unfold – in one she slams the door and drives away and the opposite end of the spectrum is that they tear off their clothes and make love on the floor there and then. Maybe we all need a dose of Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now to keep us in the moment, but the simple truth is that this ability serves our profession and our creativity. (3) Create Boundaries – Honour Yourself and Your Readers Differentiate between who the character is and how they act and who you are and how you act, but also be aware of crossing any boundaries that may undermine, conflict or betray your personal values and your essential self. This is not about pro- or self-censorship: it’s about making conscious choices and having a vision and a message of what you want to say about yourself and your stories in the world. If you want to experiment with genre and story and darkness then that’s great – it will be a personal challenge and a process of self-discovery. However, if it means betraying a personal core truth or belief system then be aware of the implications for yourself and for your audience in the short and long term. A few years ago I attended a publishing conference in the USA, where one of the key speakers was Eric...

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