Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Disney movies have long been constructed for a collective audience, sitting in a darkened
theater that shares the experience of the hero. Disney fi lms have driven home the opportunity
of the individual to succeed and that, above all, it is personal success that we celebrate. In
Disney fi lms there is a clear hero who fi ghts a clear villain. Nearly all of the classic Disney
movies are excellent case studies of the Hero's Journey.
On the other hand, Pixar fi lms follow every aspect of the structure except that of the Hero.
If we defi ne a hero simply as the eyes through which the story is told, then Pixar, too, more
or less fi ts the formula. If we defi ne the hero as the one who succeeds and whose success
we celebrate, then this changes the dynamics when we look at a Pixar fi lm.
In Pixar fi lms, from
A
Bug's
Life
on, the role of hero is more often played as if it were a
baton in a relay race, passing from character to character. [5] For example, in
Finding
Nemo
, it is Marlin's quest to fi nd Nemo. But Marlin fails. He begins to return home without
his son. It is Nemo who brings himself home and it is Dory's role is to reunite Nemo with
his dad. At different times, Gill is the hero, and then Dory is the hero—each character has
a unique purpose that, in the true Andy Warhol 15-minutes-of-fame theory, allows him or
her to be the hero of his or her own part of the story. This, coupled with original story, is
what makes a Pixar fi lm seem concurrently familiar, yet unique and fresh. Even in
The
Incredibles
there are times when the role of hero passes from character to character, even
to the shape-shifting character named appropriately, Mirage.
Miyazaki also orders the events in a classic structure. However, in most of his stories the
identifi cation of good and evil is not clear. For Miyazaki, evil, if it can be called that, is
that which dwells within us. His stories have confl ict that is often more internalized. Success
comes through personal resurrection. Through the character's personal transformation, the
peace in society is restored.
Character Archetypes
In movies there are defi nite character roles that appear over and over in the all of the stories.
These roles come from character archetypes. An archetype is defi ned as a pervasive idea
or image that serves as an original model from which copies are made. For our purposes,
this means that there is a baseline character model that any surface or costuming can be
placed upon. The hero is a baseline that can be a superhero, Mr. Incredible; an ogre, Shrek;
a girl, Mulan; a woolly mammoth, Manfred, and so on.
The term fi rst comes from Carl Jung, a 20th century psychoanalyst who studied dreams and
the unconscious. Jung found that there were reoccurring images and themes running through
the dreams of his patients that were so similar that they could not come from individual
confl icts. He believed that these images originated in the collective unconsciousness of all
people, and he called these images
archetypes
.
