This guy has lost his marbles! Does he think there is an archaeologist running around Cairo looking for religious artifacts? Or certain British kids getting whisked away to a castle to learn magic? Or that a man dressed as a bat is jumping across rooftops sending criminals to the hospital?
Well, no, I don’t think those things, but the fact that we know these characters are Indiana Jones, Harry Potter, and Batman proves they are much more than fictional. A close friend has a tattoo on their arm with the phrase, ‘Life imitates art’. On the surface, it doesn’t seem to mean much, but let’s scratch off that surface a little.
Photo by Linus Sandvide on Unsplash
Why Do We Care?
Why do we even like characters? Even the bad ones (sometimes especially the bad ones) grab hold of us and stick with us forever. Legacy characters that came out more than 50 years ago are still wildly popular today. You can even take it further back. Romeo and Juliet is taught in schools but also continues to be reimagined and re-worked in popular culture (i.e. West Side Story). We all know the story and the people. We know their motivations, their desires, their loves, and their hates. But why do they resonate with us as audience members?
Questions on the Brain
Meeting characters like, and even unlike, ourselves helps us discover questions we didn’t even think to ask. When Spider-Man is asked to choose between saving a trolley full of people or “Peter Parker’s” girlfriend, that is a big question. It is really an old philosophical dilemma in a shiny new wrapper.
But most of us don’t find ourselves in this position and thus don’t ask these questions of ourselves. We then see Spider-Man in this thrilling scenario and we find ourselves asking the question, what would we do? Let’s take a look at one of my favorite legacy characters and how they exist in reality.
The Batman
Batman is an enduring character not because of the bat but more because of the man. Batman is Bruce Wayne’s response to trauma, something many of us experience in one way or another. Bruce decided to use his trauma to change the world towards what he sees as good. But he is famously opposed by another character who responds to trauma by deciding to do more harm, The Joker.
You take two people in funny costumes and make them fight each other, but what we are really seeing is two opposing long term responses to trauma. Suddenly, it’s not a silly fist fight between comic book characters but a battle of philosophy that we can relate to. We use these stories and characters as jumping off points to learn more about ourselves.
They Do in All Ways but Physical
Batman is an idea that justice and morals can prevail in a world that can be unfair and even cruel. Fictional characters are influencers of our everyday lives that we have met only through the stories they inhabit.. When we see the bat symbol, we shouldn’t think of the fictional character, but rather what we learn from Bruce’s experience and how we have changed because of it. Fictional characters exist in all ways but physical, which is enough for me.
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