Intangible Antag

[scripter1]

I've been working on this one script for a while now and it's going pretty good BUT I was just kind of mulling over some of it's nagging issues and I suddenly realized "I don't have a flesh and blood antag. The real source of opposition for my protag is a cultural idea!"

NOW, I have actually got two characters who play the role of physical antags in the script, so..... I'm not really concerned about that.

It's being comfortable with an invisible antag.

Thoughts?

[NikeeGoddess]

you antag can be a theme. crash is the perfect example of that. every character was a victim of the theme.

[Daydreamer]

Yes, I think you can have an invisible antag. Though I'd recommend creating a flesh and blood character that incorporates that cultural idea.

[Hillgate]

I used to go out with a girl called Ann Tag...she was a bit of a car-crash too. :)

[scripter1]

eleven oclock last night when I wrote that, so, I didn't really get my thoughts fully developed there.

This is what I'm really concerned about.

1 physical antag is in prison and is pulling some strings from the inside.
He doesn't come fully into effect until the climax.

The other antag which is the active one controling the story flow is killed off just before the climax.

My concern was that I didn't have a real antag for several pages.

THEN I realized that the TRUE antag was the cultural sterotypes put on the protag. What he is REALLY fighting is his place in society.

SO my question is, how do I explain that in development?
Does it make sense, seem plausible in those words?

And yeah Nikee, I think you had a good thought there, the theme and antag are the same.

Crash is a good example.
So is Bend it like Beckham.

[clockwork]

I think we always need physical antogonists. I agree that themes can be great opposing forces but Crash had its bad guys and even Bend It Like Beckham had the devotely traditional mother and father. Antagonists don't have to be evil to the core - the definition of an antagonist is simply someone or something that stands in the way or is an opposing force to what the protagonist wants.

I think to explain it, you need to talk about your themes in more generalised terms. Explain the plot and then augment that with, "At its heart, it's really a social commentary on how we live and fight racism," (or whatever.) It depends on how artsy you want to get but I do think that most readers are almost always expecting good old fashioned good vs evil, human-on-human confrontations so be sure to lay focus on that too.

[zeprosnepsid]

I don't have any problem with invisible antagonists necessarily. There are a million movies where the antagonist is actually the protagonist or his/her personal issues or some such. Also, most feminist/girl power films have tangible antagonists but they're really fighting the patriarchal society.

It's best if your tangible antagonists are physical representations of your thematic antagonists, but I still this could work depending how you do it. As long as it's clear what he's fighting against and that he's fighting against something, I'm not sure it would bother me as a viewer/reader that thing is not a person.

[Plot Device]

In My Big Fat Greek Wedding, the anatgonist was her Greek culture and the pressures from her family. But even then, it wasn't an antagonist that needed to be "defeated" as much as "worked with" and "placated." A lesser script would have had her build up her anger to such a point that she would have eventually exploded at her family and told them all to go to hell. An equally lesser script would have rewritten her father (or someone) as a true bad guy in need of a comeuppance. But the simple yet genius point of the film that we actually saw is that family is family, and you just gotta deal with them as best you can.

ALL of the tension in that film came from the pressure of her family. The tension was palpable. It never let up. It was very relatable. It was very real. And that particular anatgonist of family pressure worked well enough to propell that film toward box office records.

Some film industry watchers have been preplexed by MBFGW, scratching their heads at how a film with no discernable atangonist could work so well. They have likewise scratched their heads at how a film that takes place in the context of such a specialized sub-culture --American Greek culture-- could have such universal appeal. My answer to that is: family is family, and we can all relate to that whole scene.

[NikeeGoddess]

clock - crash didn't have any bad guys. they were all victims and therefore symbols of the theme.

[clockwork]

I think we can agree that traditional screenwriting terms like good guys and bad guys don't really apply to a film like Crash. And while there weren't any Hans Gruber or Buffalo Bill-level bad guys, I certainly saw bad guys upon first viewing. That my perception of those bad guys shifted throughout is a testament to the storytelling. They were all victims, yes, but most of them were perpetrators too. Without that there would have been nothing to 'crash' against.

[clockwork]

In My Big Fat Greek Wedding, the anatgonist was her Greek culture and the pressures from her family. But even then, it wasn't an antagonist that needed to be "defeated" as much as "worked with" and "placated." A lesser script would have had her build up her anger to such a point that she would have eventually exploded at her family and told them all to go to hell. An equally lesser script would have rewritten her father (or someone) as a true bad guy in need of a comeuppance. But the simple yet genius point of the film that we actually saw is that family is family, and you just gotta deal with them as best you can.

ALL of the tension in that film came from the pressure of her family. The tension was palpable. It never let up. It was very relatable. It was very real. And that particular anatgonist of family pressure worked well enough to propell that film toward box office records.

Some film industry watchers have been preplexed by MBFGW, scratching their heads at how a film with no discernable atangonist could work so well. They have likewise scratched their heads at how a film that takes place in the context of such a specialized sub-culture --American Greek culture-- could have such universal appeal. My answer to that is: family is family, and we can all relate to that whole scene.

Greek Wedding was an iteration of Cinderella - one of the oldest stories around. I think people were drawn and charmed by that as much as anything else.

[Hillgate]

People struggling against other people make good stories. In Conspiracy Theory the 'system' turned out to be more like a personal vendetta. Faceless systems against which protags can struggle are normally created by people who have motives for creating them: personalise your system and you have a good antag. Keep it depersonalised and you lose something I think. :)

[LIVIN]

In my recent scripts, I have...

1) A protagonist who is also the antagonist

2) A physical antagonist

3) I'm going to have to say, another protagonist who is also the antagonist

4) The "system" antagonist being given a face

So, it looks about halvsies on the physical antagonist.

[nmstevens]

I've been working on this one script for a while now and it's going pretty good BUT I was just kind of mulling over some of it's nagging issues and I suddenly realized "I don't have a flesh and blood antag. The real source of opposition for my protag is a cultural idea!"

NOW, I have actually got two characters who play the role of physical antags in the script, so..... I'm not really concerned about that.

It's being comfortable with an invisible antag.

Thoughts?


On some level what you are talking about is true of every story -- and that is because, in every story, both protagonist and antagonist (whether that antagonist is a person, a natural disaster, an addiction, or a great white shark) actually embodies some thematic idea.

Order against chaos.

Love against family duty.

Family loyalty against Moral Responsibility.

These are themes -- but themes aren't simply things that are tacked onto stories. They are emergent properties of stories.

It is almost as if you can imagine a story as a kind of moral equation, testing a particular thematic idea. If person embodying moral idea X confronted with situation Y makes choices A, B, and C, then the result will be good outcome Z (or tragic outcome Q).

And that outcome -- Z, or Q -- is the statement of the theme of the story.

That doesn't mean that someone comes out and tells us. The event itself tells us.

Michael Corleone is the decent son -- the moral son, of a criminal family. At the beginning, he tells his girlfriend this story about his father -- this terrible story about how he threatens to murder a man in cold blood in order to get him to break a contract.

So he knows that his father -- however loving he may be to *him* -- is an evil man. He's a thief and a murderer. And he says right up front -- that's my father -- it's not me.

And at a certain point in the story, his father earns the consequences of the life that he's led -- he's shot down in the street, and when he's not killed, the killers, clearly, are going to come after him and finish the job.

And that's as it should be. Vito Corleone has lived his life by crime and violence and that's how he should die.

And Michael, at that point, has a choice to make. Crooked drug dealer, crooked cop, father that he loves. And he chooses to save the father that he loves.

But the father that he loves, in fact, is no better than the crooked cop and the crooked drug dealer. They are all of a kind. For them, it's business.

Michael says when he's trying to convince them to let him kill the two men -- "It's business" -- but it's not, for him. He's acting to save his father.

And for him, it's the key turning point. He's bloodied his hands, and from that point on, he starts down a course that turns him into exactly the person that he never intended to be.

And the final scene, when he has murdered all of these men, including his own brother-in-law and his wife - the same woman who, at the beginning, he swore -- that's not me -- asks him about it, and finally he says, this one time, I'll tell you about my business.

And he lies to her. And we know -- not because he's killed all these men -- but because he's lied to his wife (because everything, supposedly, he's done for his family -- and now we see that he's cut himself off from his family. In fact he has nothing) -- we know that he's lost his soul.

That final scene embodies the theme. He keeps trying to do the right thing -- and because, in the end, he could not choose the greater good over family (remember the whole business about how he was castigated for going off to war and "fighting for strangers) it ends up destroying him and destroying the very thing he is trying to save.

But if you look at this movie analytically, you can see that all of these various characters -- good, bad, or otherwise, serve very precise roles in terms of unfolding this whole moral, thematic dilemma -- letting us see how it plays out in the dramatic landscape of the story.

That's what you have to look at in terms of your story -- how the various characters are working toward unfolding your larger theme -- what purpose they serve, what ideas they embody.

If you do it right, nobody should have to make speeches -- the action (by which I mean the events of the story and the key decisions of the characters, not necessarily an "action" scene) should embody the theme and its ultimate revelation.

NMS