How to judge characters: action or character

I want to touch on something Katherine mentioned earlier in a post. In talking about the ongoing political drama that is shaping the coming presidential election, she made the point that many Democratic voters take as a base assumption that the platform of each candidate is similar enough that discussing the relative merit of each platform is useless. The platform of each candidate is essentially a Democratic Party platform. Therefore, the merit of each candidate’s character can be exclusively used to determine who is the “better” candidate.

From her analysis of the hoopla surrounding Obama and Hillary and from what I’ve seen on the political blogs, news, etc., it seems like the election process is turning into a soap. This comparison has likely been drawn before, but probably not by people who take soap operas seriously. I can think of at least one pundit who has likened the sparring between Obama(tm) and Hillary(tm) to a “bad soap,” but these types of generalizations aren’t what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the way, just to theorize a bit, soap fans judge soap characters.

First, it is important for fans to make some base assumptions about how they will judge characters. Essentially, they ignore actions and judge according to character. Consider the alternative: judging characters by their actions. We’ve already established that plot is quite meaningless without the presence of strong character development. Soap fans take for granted that plots may be contrived or unrealistic – that characters’ actions may be unrealistic – but the important thing is that those actions reveal to us the character of the characters (yes, it’s annoying that “character” has several different but related meanings). Similarly, with the current trend in judging Hillary and Obama, there is very little talk about the candidates’ actions (their legislative record, the details of their planks, etc.) and more about their characters (the bitterness comment, the 3am commercial, Rev. Wright, dodging sniper fire, etc.). 

The interaction between the most zealous soap fans and their favorite character and the most zealous political fans and their favorite candidate further bear striking resemblances. First, there is the irrational and zealous defense of one’s favorite. For example, despite knowing that Hillary lied about the sniper fire, zealous fans say she misspoke, burying it neatly under a phrase. Second, there is the irrational hatred of the enemy of the character. That both people are clearly decent human beings always with the ability to mend their ways (except for of course the occasional Nixon or Gray Gerard) does not matter to zealous fans as long as thinking of the enemy as such risks jeopardizing the safety of their relationship with their favorite character. In my case, if Gray Gerard were such a character – a complex human being who had the ability to turn good – there is no way I would support his moral conversion if it meant the possible crumbling of Vienna and Henry’s relationship (because losing Vienna would devastate Henry). Third, and most importantly, the zealotry itself is tantamount to wilful ignorance. When one actively ignores the good things that a hated character does, one can assume that zealotry has set in. For example, among supporters of Obama, Hillary is absolutely demonized and vice versa. This third observation reveals most clearly the emphasis that is placed by both political fans and soap fans on the character of the characters they like because what is essentially happening is that fans are pitting reality against their perception of character. Once they have made up their mind about a person’s character, they are able to spin reality (or the facts within a show) to support their perception of a person’s character.