Which are your favourite fictional characters? And more importantly, why? It’s a question with a very personal and unique answer for each one of us, and despite this, Hollywood seems to be very clear about what ALL of us are looking for, or should look for, in a character: That represents us, literally, and in the most superficial way possible. But is this true? Is it really the representation of our superficial characteristics what we value most in a character? Or is there something else?
To answer this question I have asked for your help and I have done a survey both on YouTube, and on the channel's discord, asking these two simple questions: What are your favourite characters and why?, without any prior context to not affect your answers. But before giving you the results I want to clarify one very important thing: I did not ask or ask now directly what you think of representation in general or in any specific series for one simple reason, we are MANIPULATED. For several years in many of the most popular productions from the most important Hollywood studios, we have been hearing statements from the actors, the production team and the mass media who repeated, over and over again, that we had to see this film or TV series because of the great representation or diversity it had, because it has the first dwarf or black elf, or the first homosexual kiss of the franchise. Finally, these actors, scriptwriters, and producers could see themselves on the screen, they finally had representation. Before, I believed that all these statements were just that, and did not greatly affect our opinion of a series or a movie, especially in people who do not follow the news from the entertainment world closely, but the reality is that they do affect us, and much more than I believed. We have seen enormous controversies on social networks that have surely affected us to a greater or lesser extent and do not allow us to give a coolheaded response to the question: how important is it, and how much do we value superficial representation in a character? We saw it with Velma, Rings of power, She-Hulk,
The latest Disney productions in general, or The Witcher, as far as going against historical evidence in a “documentary” so that the producer and director could feel identified with Cleopatra, And it has reached a point... in which, when commenting on series like The Rings of Power at work, colleagues who are not very involved in the world of entertainment end up giving you answers taken from the access media that echoes the production companies. And to comments like “The Rings of Power bored me and had a very poor script.” They end up answering, “Well, it's not that bad, IT'S FANTASY, and the bad reviews were because of the black elves.” To what extent have the media conditioned these responses? Don't know. That's why it seemed better to go directly to the characters that we love the most, that attract us the most, leaving aside all these circumstances that we are currently experiencing, and see what answers we give ourselves when we take all the media noise out of the equation and How many of us really value a character because “he looks like me, he represents me” The survey reveals one thing, when we think with our hearts and leave everything else aside we have very different priorities… Of 138 characters mentioned, 101 were unique characters, and the ones that you see on the screen are the top 22. Later I will comment on several curiosities that I found after analysing the list. But focusing on what we were talking about, do you know how many of you, who helped me with this survey, consider that you like a character because it represents you physically? ZERO - Nil - NONE No response that took superficial aspects into consideration at the time I am recording this video. These are the top 5 reasons why we love a character: 1 First point, and the most mentioned along with the second. We love characters with great development, a good background, complex and with significant internal conflicts. In short, well written and interesting. Totally opposite to the one-dimensional, flat characters without background that many series use as banners of “representation.” 2 Second point and no less mentioned, we like to see tenacious characters, with great willpower, who do not give up easily and are capable of overcoming themselves, who accept failure and their weaknesses and move forward through their efforts and bravery. Characters like Thorfinn in Vinland Saga or Kaladin in Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archives. Who go through all kinds of circumstances from slavery to the loss of loved ones, but they do not give up, they face despair, overcome it, and grow as characters. Another huge contrast with some of the characters that today's Hollywood brings us to whom everything is given. or they manage to develop skills overnight, instead of earning them, training, overcoming obstacles, or facing their fears... 3. If the other two points are opposite to the characters that Hollywood presents us in most popular productions, which are not always watched the most… this third point would seem taken from a parallel reality. Many of you have mentioned that what you value most are characters with Principles, ideals or convictions, each one of you named it your own way, both in heroes and in COMPLEX villains. or Characters like Lelouch, an antihero with great ethical and moral development throughout the Anime Code Geass. Qualities such as Responsibility, the Sense of Duty, unbreakable morality, Loyalty, and others such as honour, nobility, kindness, or sacrifice have been highlighted at this point. All valued principles that we admire in a character. Among which stands out Sam, tied with Thorfinn by the way in second place in this survey and who is probably one of those who best represents these attributes and whose nobility has remained engraved in our hearts: Or villains with their own moral code with which they are consistent and follow to the end.
Of course, talking about responsibility and a sense of duty to script writers who write protagonists who usually seek to achieve power for purely selfish reasons, without ever talking about the responsibility that it entails, is like talking to them in Klingon. I'm sorry Ben, you live on in our memory, but Hollywood has forgotten you…
"Remember a great power comes with a great responsibility" But do not fear because the fourth point, Hope, arrives! We like characters who inspire us, from whom we learn vital lessons to face moments that all people go through and have always gone through throughout history. Like How to overcome the loss of a loved one, not lose hope in bad times or defend freedom. Many of the characters already mentioned fit here, although in the survey you highlighted Superman as a symbol of hope. Are some of today's Hollywood scriptwriters trying to teach us similar lessons? I ask this because I'm sure that some of them do, but characters like She-Hulk, Galadrriel or Captain Marvel come to mind who are more driven by a feeling of revenge, revanchism and resentment towards their circumstances rather than by anything else, and they are not capable of inspiring anything to anyone. 5 Fifth and last point, we highly value Wisdom and intelligence, both in villains and in our heroes, some like Gandalf teach us unforgettable and valuable lessons, Or others like Sherlock Holmes who use their intellect to solve mysteries that intrigue and captivate us. What do our “favourite” showrunners and producers think about these qualities? Do they value intelligence and wisdom? Does that mean we don't attach any importance to representation?
Well, I don't think that's the case, when I was little and they called me “four eyes” at school, I was happy to read, and then watch, the Harry Potter movies in theatres, it's good to have a hero with glasses, but if you ask me why I like Harry Potter as a character, I would mention his courage, his loyalty, his capacity for sacrifice and self-improvement and perhaps I would finish with a “oh, and he wears glasses” if I remember. Yes, it is enriching to have diversity in film and television, to see all kinds of characters, from all backgrounds and from multiple cultures. In fact, in the 21st century, this is something that anyone with internet has access to, you just have to go on Netflix and avoid focusing only on American productions to find it. However, these productions, which are carried out by production companies like Disney to reach the largest possible audience, these productions are NOT multicultural and have a purely tokenistic approach to diversity. In all of them we find places populated by people with all kinds of physical features but behaving just as they behave in current California, it is a single culture that they represent, in current series this is not usually a very serious problem, but in fantasy series it is totally unrealistic to paint all regions of a fantastic universe the same, as California, which I already talked about in the video “Why Inclusion kills diversity.” And there are few exceptions of TV series with diversity in which we see rich characters that enrich the story and are part of it naturally, such as Game of Thrones, Arcane, House of the Dragon and very recently One Piece. Added to the bad practice of tokenism are other common practices in Hollywood such as race-swapping, or self-insertion, which are ultimately symptoms of the lack of creativity that the industry in the United States is experiencing nowadays; perhaps they are not capable of creating new franchises, new stories, new characters? With the topic of self-insertion, many people in the entertainment industry, from comic artists to producers, seem to need, to a sick point, to see their reflection in the characters they create. Narcissism in its purest form. They say it is a message of inclusion, representation and "diversity", that's what they call it, but it is a compliment or an insult that they claim to represent millions of people with one-dimensional, flat characters, in many cases arrogant, and childish... with lines of script taken from our preschool years. That's why I found very interesting points on the survey that seemed incredible to me at first, but that after thinking about it a little, didn't surprise me at all.
And if you look at the dates when these characters were created you will see that very few of them were conceived in this century. In fact, if we take into account the first appearance in the novels in 1954 of the characters in the list of the Lord of the Rings: Aragorn, Sam and Gandalf, and Game of Thrones in the first novel of A Song of Ice and Fire published in 1996 with Tyrion in the list Discarding these characters Of those created from the year 2000 onwards, there is not a single one that has its origin in a TV series or movie. We have a character who appears exclusively in novels, Kaladin Stormblessed from the Storm Archives saga as I mentioned before We have 2 from Anime or manga: Thorfinn from Vinland Saga, in second place, who appeared in 2005 in the manga and in the anime in 2019, and Lelouch from Code Geass also mentioned before which appeared for the first time in 2006. And ladies and gentlemen, we have 3 coming from video games, Arthur Morgan from Red Dead Redemption 2 in 2018, Joel from The Last of Us in 2013, and that same year making her first appearance in League of Legends: JINX. Which is one of the main characters of Arcane released in 2021. As you can see, none of the modern film and television characters from Hollywood in the last 20 years have made it to the top 22, very revealing, and the most recent to appear on the list is Neo from The Matrix, released in 1999. This data corroborates the creative decline of today's Hollywood, and how other media are managing to inspire us more deeply in recent years. Of the 138 votes that I mentioned, 25% went to characters from Anime and 11% to characters from video games. Currently it is these media, and Anime in particular, that are putting greater focus on trying to tell good stories, putting any other consideration in the background. And I say anime in particular because in the video game industry we have been seeing similar controversies for some time, hopefully it won't get worse. Personally, I am very happy to see that when a question deviates from current events and media noise, like the one I asked at the beginning of this video: Which are our favourite characters and why? Most of us focus mainly on aspects that we admire, on characters who give us hope, who inspire us in difficult times, who have Ideals and principles. That we value characters with a rich background and coherent development, in short, that they are well written and have soul, instead of being an empty shell painted the appropriate colour on the outside. I hope to see in the future new characters like these across all media Meanwhile, I would love to know, Which are your favourite characters? and if you think that we will find characters like these more frequently in Hollywood, in the meantime, I encourage you to join my live streams, and I leave you a video here that may interest you… And until our paths cross again... good way.
