Does Character Likability or Lack There Of Get in the Way of Enjoying/Appreciating a Story?

[shadowkat]

Have to go to the Porgy and Bess musical soon. Before take off for that, and get a bit of eat...stumbled upon the following juicy brain-bit courtesy of one of the people on my flist.

This is from:http://onlyifyoufinishedtfios.tumblr.com/

John Green is answering questions from his fans on the book "The Fault in Our Stars". And one of the fans asked this question about authorial intent:

Anonymous asked: I know you always say that books belong to the reader, but how much credit do you give to the author's intent? We were talking in English class a while ago about how the author wanted the reader to feel about a certain character, and whether or not that held up for us. Obviously, you had intentions when writing, but were your intentions to make us feel a certain way, or are feelings for the reader to decide?

John Green's response for the record is similar to the ones that James Joyce, Faulkner, Twain, and various others have given at different points:

John Green (Author of The Fault in Our Stars): I think trying to divine an author’s intent is generally pretty wrong-headed, although I guess it shouldn’t be dismissed entirely (and obviously I’m willing to answer questions about intent).

That said, it can be a way into an interesting discussion: whether you suppose I wanted you to like Margo Roth Spiegelman, for instance, is not an interesting question to me. But if you go from there to discussing whether characters in novels need to be likable for a book to be good, and whether reading experiences need to be straightforwardly fulfilling in order to be positive, and what (if anything) the point of reading and telling stories is, and whether we can be empathetic toward people we dislike, and if shared values are at the core of human connection or if it’s something altogether less noble, and whether we can reconcile ourselves to the distance between who we want ourselves and one another to be and who we turn out to be…well, that’s pretty interesting to me.

The portion in bold is the part that interests me as well. Authorial intent tends to be a bit boring to determine after a bit for the reasons Green mentions.

But how we relate to characters and how that affects our reading or watching experience fascinates me. It's why I did those Buffy Character Wars Polls and speculate on the responses. What is it that makes a character interesting in a fictional novel? Do we need them to be likable? Do we need them to validate our own values and moral perspective to be legitimate? Can we enjoy or find it interesting to read or watch an irredeemable character, who is clearly "unlikable", such as Walt in Breaking Bad? Or even say, Angelus in Buffy? Can we feel empathy towards someone we dislike? Is it more or less noble to feel empathy for a serial killer? Can we put a value judgement on such things?

Is it wrong to prefer Holtz to Wood? Or Darla to Willow? Or Spike to Faith? Can we even evaluate such preferences on a moral scale? Can we understand them from a moral perspective.

For the record I don't believe we can. I don't think you can make a moral judgement or place a moral value on how others view or enjoy a character - since you can't know their heart or mind on the matter. And I don't think you can place such a value on your own. The reasons to me seem...undefinable and various.

But I find it interesting...that people do. That I do. Wondering how someone can like Amy over say Faith or Willow. But I can see it...and I do feel empathy for Amy. In some respects as much empathy as I feel for Tara. Even though I have nothing in common with either.

I don't know. Yet..I'm struggling to like stories like Breaking Bad or Atonement...because I did not "like" the characters or found them to be "likable".

Comments

[flameraven.livejournal.com]

It depends. But I think that if your writing is good, you can get away with more unlikeable characters than if your writing is only average or actually bad. For example- Game of Thrones. Pretty much everyone in those books is morally grey, with maybe one or two exceptions. They're all kind of terrible people. But the writing is good enough that nearly all of them are still compelling. Even the villains are usually the kind of villains you love to hate-- Joffrey and, say, the Bastard of Bolton are both pretty straight-up evil, but they still feel like real people even when I want to reach through the book and strangle them. And if they weren't so upsetting, it wouldn't be as satisfying when karma finally caught up to them.

On the other hand, I've read stories where I just don't like the main character, and it's ruined the story for me. The biggest culprit of this was the Dresden Files. I just really, really don't like Harry, and we're stuck in his POV for the books. Part of my dislike is his unconscious sexism, but a bigger part of it is the one thing I cannot stand in characters: stupidity. Especially repeated stupidity.

I can get behind even an unlikeable or annoying character if they act sensibly, but if they keep making stupid decisions I get very frustrated and usually throw the book down. Harry spent something like 8 books continually charging into increasing danger with no plan, being forced to blast his way out with brute strength, and being horribly injured in the process. And then the very next time a problem came up... he did the exact same thing over again. He finally started to come up with decent plans and, you know, call for backup, but by then it was like book 9 and I was pretty much done with the series.

To answer the last section of the topic, though... I don't think it's right to decide that liking a character is right or wrong, but I understand why people do it. We like people who think like us, and liking the same characters or aspects of a show provides a shared connection. It's a lot harder for people to think outside their own standards and consider why someone else might like a character they hate.