Well, here's where I get to see whether I set things up properly to let me post from my work account...
Neil wrote:
True. What I meant was, ignore the characters as characters, but don't ignore them as representations of an ideological position. See them for *what* they stand for, rather than *who* they are.
No, thanks. The whole idea of viewing people not as individual people but as representations of some ideological abstraction is, frankly, pretty repugnant to me (and that's true, if perhaps slightly less so, even in the case of fictional people). Avon is Avon and Meegat is Meegat. They're *characters*, not simply representations of ideological positions, and, IMO, to treat them otherwise is to do them -- and the entire series -- a grave disservice. If they *were* just cardboard mouthpieces for ideological positions, I wouldn't be watching the series. (OK, OK, Meegat is arguably rather cardboard, but IMHO, whether you attribute it to Terry Nation, to the director, or to the actress, she comes across as having far more dignity and individuality than she seems to be getting credit for.) You can argue that the fact that the educated, "civilized" male character is cast in this role and the female, "primitive" character in that one is significant, and you undoubtedly have a point there (although I wouldn't take it nearly as far as some people seem to be inclined to). But the details of Avon's *individual* personality, I think, are every bit as relevant to how the situation plays itself out, and to ignore them is to ignore a significant facet of the episode. The scripts, after all, aren't written for generic, faceless ideological mouthpieces, they're written for specific, established characters, and that *has* to shape the story, subtext and all. (It would have been very interesting, I think, to see how "Deliverance" would have gone with Blake in Avon's place. I suspect it would have played *very* differently.)
-- Betty Ragan ** bragan@nrao.edu ** http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~bragan Not speaking for my employers, officially or otherwise. "Seeing a rotten picture for the special effects is like eating a tough steak for the smothered onions..." -- Isaac Asimov