From: Betty Ragan ragan@sdc.org
I'm still mulling over Neil's responses to this post of mine, btw. I must say, Neil's worldview appears to be quite alien to mine, and thus, while interesting, rather difficult to respond to. I think the main source of the difference in viewpoint, actually, may be that I don't regard "ideology" as representing anything *real*. Ideology just consists of ideas in people's heads. And those ideas can be very powerful, true, but they spring from people, not the other way around. But, like I said, I'm still mulling...
Well, if my worldview is alien to yours, then maybe yours is to mine:). Which is why I asked "Why characters?" in the first place.
This paragraph seems rather muddled. Ideology might not be 'real', but then an awful lot of things aren't. A decision to sit down and watch, say, Deliverance isn't 'real' either, and neither is a speculation on how Blake would have reacted to Meegat. But speculations never stopped a character junkie!
I'm not surprised that this is muddled because it seems very hard to work through and get answers. I've spent the past couple of days trying to work out just how much importance I place on the characters, and why, or how, or where it's located, and I've yet to come up with any answers.
What I do think, and I'm quite aware that this might be nothing more than a reflection of my own prejudices, is that my distaste for character junkieism (as opposed to those who practice it) lies in what I perceive as a superficial appraisal of the series. There is an exagerrated awareness of differences between individuals, whereas I tend to look for similarities, which in turn leads to the social or, dare I say, the ideological. There is also a focus on immediate impressions - what is said or done (or worn - now that is what I really do call superficial) - with an implied reluctance to look deeper than the cosmetic surface. And that devotion to 'playing the game' - discounting the external contribution of the process of production (writers, directors, actors, budget etc).
Which is fine for threads that confine themselves within those limits, but not so fine when it gets dumped on threads that try to step out of those narrow parameters.
It comes across as deliberate sabotage sometimes.
Neil