# Characters that aren’t understood by their writers **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 27, 2017, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/characters-that-aren-t-understood-by-their-writers/780939 "2017-02-27T11:49:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2017, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/characters-that-aren-t-understood-by-their-writers/780939/21 "2017-03-04T17:05:52Z")
> [@seal\_cleaner](#): > > Harpo Marx was supposedly offered a lot of money to speak one line in a movie (Love Happy, IIRC) and was offended that his silence was regarded as a gimmick rather than an aspect of his character. Doper Mapcase may have insight on this. > [@RealityChuck](#): > > The account was that he was offered the money, but he just shook his head. The story comes from Joe Adamson’s wonderful biography _Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and sometimes Zeppo_. As he tells it, producer David Loew in the run-up to making\* A Night in Casablanca\* offered Harpo $55,000 to cry “Murder!” in one scene. (It’s amazing how many cites round this to the more understandable but wrong $50,000.) The idea was to flood the country with posters proclaiming “Harpo Speaks,” a great line. Wonder why nobody used it later on? Hmm, might have just missed it. > [@](#): > > When asked whether he wanted to do it, Harpo thought it over. And then shook his head. So Chuck got this right. But did Adamson? It’s doubtful. Adamson doesn’t supply a citation for this, but we have an actual contemporary account by Hedda Hopper in the [March 31, 1946 Chicago Tribune](http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1946/03/31/page/179/article/mad-marx-freres). There Harpo does have a spoken comeback. > [@](#): > > Look what happened to Garbo. She talked. It’s clear to me that the incident happened. It’s also clear that nobody bothered to record what Harpo said or did. When people talked about it, they supplied a punchline to make it into an anecdote. Confirmation of this is an earlier newspaper report on the offer, [Akron Beacon Journal, Nov. 15, 1945, p24](https://www.newspapers.com/image/145942441/) Betty French’s column first mentions Harpo being offered a speaking part in Ben Hecht’s _Specter of the Rose_, which fell through if true. Then comes the Loew offer. > [@](#): > > But Harpo refused. Flat. To his way of thinking, explained the [press] release, “that one word or any other word would jettison his professional career, built so carefully all these years on a foundation of complete silence.” That sounds painfully true. Harpo, a consummate professional, thought about it and refused with an explanation not a joke. But who wants to hear that? And can anyone in the world tell me why Groucho and Chico pass the spell checker but not Harpo? It’s an outrage! ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2017, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/characters-that-aren-t-understood-by-their-writers/780939/22 "2017-03-04T17:26:10Z")
Wolverine is a backwoodsman, and a survivalist. Drop him naked in the middle of the wilderness, and he will walk out a few days later, wearing buckskin moccasins and munching on a haunch of venison. Some writers have attempted to turn him into a touchy-feely animal rights activist. In my opinion, they are woefully ignorant of the culture Wolverine grew up in. He might be an environmentalist, but it’s because he wants to protect his favorite hunting grounds. In Jean Auel’s books (_Clan of the Cave Bear_ and its sequels), her female characters sing. Her male characters are one-note stereotypes. She likes to give exposition from a character’s point of view, telling you what that character is thinking. With the women, that works well. With the men, I often find myself thinking, “A guy might perform those actions. He might say those words, especially if he was trying to impress the hot blonde chick. But he would not rationalize it the way Auel has him rationalizing it.” ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2017, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/characters-that-aren-t-understood-by-their-writers/780939/23 "2017-03-04T18:34:13Z")
This happens a lot with comic-book characters, because they tend to have so many authors. How many different authors has Batman had? But [their interpretations of him have been so different](http://gallery.burrowowl.net/images/59/599b2541b6e1fc324a403da63f682206) that they might as well be different characters, and it’s not even possible to say any more which is correct. ---
**Author:** ![zamboniracer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e9a140/32.png) [@zamboniracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zamboniracer)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2017, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/characters-that-aren-t-understood-by-their-writers/780939/24 "2017-03-04T18:54:50Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Harlan Ellison famously misunderstood the Star Trek universe and didn’t really get Dr. McCoy’s personality. Really? Why do you say that, Trinopus? I am puzzled. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2017, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/characters-that-aren-t-understood-by-their-writers/780939/25 "2017-03-04T20:00:02Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > This happens a lot with comic-book characters, because they tend to have so many authors. How many different authors has Batman had? But [their interpretations of him have been so different](http://gallery.burrowowl.net/images/59/599b2541b6e1fc324a403da63f682206) that they might as well be different characters, and it’s not even possible to say any more which is correct. I’ve definitely seen that image multiple times, but what it doesn’t take into consideration is that different iterations of Batman (and, really, all of the classic superheroes) have operated at different levels of realism and drama, from the cartooney camp of the Adam West TV show to the Frank Miller Goddamned Batman to the Dark Knight series of films. So each of those Batman iterations likely was understood by its creator, and they’re all different because they’re all existing in different kinds of fictional worlds. If you’re going to, as the image does, conflate morality with optimism, you can’t have the paragon Lawful Good Batman in a world where, as is common in Batman stories, the Lawful element of society (that is, the recognized law enforcement) is as criminal as the gangs themselves. That said, I’ve long held that Batman is the Rousseau to Superman’s Hobbes, someone who argues in favor of the redemption of mankind and the idea that individuals can and should make a difference, instead of having to rely on the reified Leviathan who is Superman. Plus, of course, we don’t really need a Batman who’s just a carbon copy of the Punisher. Frank Castle’s interesting in part because he _doesn’t_ have tons of gadgets, just the same weaponry his enemies have, and wins because he’s smarter and more brutal than everyone else. ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2017, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/characters-that-aren-t-understood-by-their-writers/780939/26 "2017-03-04T22:48:31Z")
> [@Loach](#): > > I recently saw John Cleese live when he had a Q&A after a screening of Holy Grail. Part of his “Holy Shit I Paid my Ex-wife a Lot of Money” tour. He made it very clear that he doesn’t understand why people find some of his work to be funny. After seeing a couple of the later episodes of Fawlty Towers, I can _completely_ agree. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2017, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/characters-that-aren-t-understood-by-their-writers/780939/27 "2017-03-04T23:32:18Z")
> [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#): > > Tolkien didn’t understand Tom Bombadil, or know what role he played in his story or his universe. I wonder if it’s possible to make a short fanfilm set in Peter Jackson’s Middle Earth about Tom Bombadil, and bend it to make it work. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2017, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/characters-that-aren-t-understood-by-their-writers/780939/28 "2017-03-04T23:54:26Z")
On Bombadil, I would agree that Tolkien didn’t understand him, but not that he didn’t understand his role. Rather, I would say that Bombadil’s role was precisely to be not understood, and that Tolkien was aware of that. In our universe, there are some things that just don’t seem to fit into any of our nice neat categories, and hence, for any other universe to feel real, the same must be true of them. ---
**Author:** ![seal\_cleaner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@seal\_cleaner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/seal_cleaner)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2017, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/characters-that-aren-t-understood-by-their-writers/780939/29 "2017-03-05T00:03:41Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > And can anyone in the world tell me why Groucho and Chico pass the spell checker but not Harpo? It’s an outrage! And why should “Chico” pass? We both know it was supposed to be “Chicko.” ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2017, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/characters-that-aren-t-understood-by-their-writers/780939/30 "2017-03-05T02:03:29Z")
> [@seal\_cleaner](#): > > And why should “Chico” pass? We both know it was supposed to be “Chicko.” It’s pronounced Chicko but there’s no evidence that he ever spelled it that way. Not even in the beginning. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Pork-Chop\_Express](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e9bcb4/32.png) [@The\_Pork-Chop\_Express](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Pork-Chop_Express)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2017, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/characters-that-aren-t-understood-by-their-writers/780939/31 "2017-03-05T13:08:48Z")
Not sure if this gained much exposure. _Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil_ > **[Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil](https://km-515.livejournal.com/1042.html)** > > (This is another of my speculative pieces and nothing to do with Star Wars. This one is for an older trilogy.) Old Tom Bombadil. Possibly the least liked character in The Lord of the Rings. A childish figure so disliked by fans of the book that few... ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2017, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/characters-that-aren-t-understood-by-their-writers/780939/32 "2017-03-05T13:31:39Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > My guess is that anyone who has ever seen their job portrayed on the screen feels the same way. Ask a judge sometime about courtroom dramas. Teaching is definitely this way: usually when I see a teacher on the screen, they’re a saint or a villain, and I roll my eyes. The exception was the story arc of The Wire set in schools, which was so close to my experience as a new teacher [edit: the teacher’s emotions, not the ultraviolence] that I spent most episodes curled up in the fetal position. ---
**Author:** ![igor\_frankensteen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/839c29/32.png) [@igor\_frankensteen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/igor_frankensteen)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2017, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/characters-that-aren-t-understood-by-their-writers/780939/33 "2017-03-05T14:58:41Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > This happens a lot with comic-book characters, because they tend to have so many authors. How many different authors has Batman had? But [their interpretations of him have been so different](http://gallery.burrowowl.net/images/59/599b2541b6e1fc324a403da63f682206) that they might as well be different characters, and it’s not even possible to say any more which is correct. This post is the closest to what I think this is actually all about. To start with, talking about the ORIGINATOR of a character as “not understanding their own creation” is a bit presumptuous and illogical, in most cases. As a sometime creative writer myself, as well as an avid reader of both fiction and of fiction analysis, I am well aware that many authors talk about their creations as though they are under the control of themselves, but this isn’t as simple as what this thread is talking about. When most writers say something like “I didn’t understand my own character,” they are really referring to the fact that it took them a long time to settle on a stable version of it. Lots of the time, even a single source writer, will decide that they want to have something be done in a story, by a character that they had previously established would not do that. It’s usually for structural reasons, not artistic reasons. That is, they have a deadline to finish the story, and if they were to properly attend to the character’s continuity, they’d have to go back an rework too many other things. So instead, they go with something that picky readers/viewers will pounce on, and post threads like this about. Then there are the MANY instances where the character changed, because the actual author changed. And the episodes in series, where an older work was ADAPTED to the series characters, and the script writers were stuck with loose end behaviors that didn’t match the existing troop, but had to be in the story. So they allowed anomalies, again, for the sake of “getting the shoot completed on time and on budget.” With things like the Tom Bombadil character, you need to go back and look at what Tolkien was doing then. He didn’t sit for decades, working out every last detail of the Hobbit story, and then carefully write it all out in a carefully coordinated way. He started with an idea for a sort of mythical and whimsical alternate history of Britain, and ran with it. The Hobbit has a TON of features and notions in it, which if you isolate on the details fanatically enough, you will be able to find fault with Tolkien about it. Among the more famous, but now ignored things, was that Tolkien made a big deal about how Hobbits had very large, furry feet, at the very beginning of the Hobbit, but then never once utilized that characteristic in any way shape or form, throughout the rest of that story, or in the vastly more serious Lord Of The Rings stories. Some creators are just sloppy. I have tons of problems with George Lucas’ conception of the Star Wars universe, because it’s obvious to me, that he got excited about making a new series of outer space Perils of Pauline stories, and then made up details as he went along. I’d like to get a public formal apology for having the Force turn out to be a blood born infestation. I love the Luc Besson film, Fifth Element, but the jerk packed it with crude contradictions, such as where the wonderful Mondoshawans solemnly proclaim that “time is not important, only life is important,” immediately after murdering an entirely innocent archaeologist for beginning to translate some pictographs referring to them. But I wouldn’t call that “failing to understand the characters,” I call it laziness/sloppiness by the author/director. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2017, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/characters-that-aren-t-understood-by-their-writers/780939/34 "2017-03-05T15:47:41Z")
> [@igor\_frankensteen](#): > > The Hobbit has a TON of features and notions in it, which if you isolate on the details fanatically enough, you will be able to find fault with Tolkien about it. Among the more famous, but now ignored things, was that Tolkien made a big deal about how Hobbits had very large, furry feet, at the very beginning of the Hobbit, but then never once utilized that characteristic in any way shape or form, throughout the rest of that story, or in the vastly more serious Lord Of The Rings stories. Similarly, the first sentence of John Dickson Carr’s first of twenty-odd mysteries featuring Dr. Gideon Fell starts "The old lexicographer… " You can find plenty of supposedly authoritative mystery references that give his job as lexicographer. Except that is never mentioned again. His profession is quickly changed to professor of history, endlessly working on his magnum opus, “The History of Drinking Customs in England from the Earliest Days.” There are lots of other examples in mystery series, where the conception of a character invented for a first book by a young author can’t be sustained over the decades of a series. Ellery Queen was a ridiculous fop for seven books before suddenly being yanked to a recognizable adult in the 1940s. Albert Campion was an ass of the nobility before WWII and then had to become a sober adult in a hurry. Phoebe Atwood Taylor created Asey Mayo as a caricature of a Cape Cod old salt. By WWII he was a bank trustee and ran war industries. Like Tolkien’s, all these series started in the 1930s (or 1929 for Queen). We tend to look back at the past as a single quaint, distant era and forget that their decades changed as rapidly and dramatically as our current one seems to. What works in one decade may not work at all in the next. That’s not so much the authors failing to understand the character as, with Batman, needing to reinterpret it for every new year and every new audience. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2017, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/characters-that-aren-t-understood-by-their-writers/780939/35 "2017-03-05T17:04:29Z")
> [@zamboniracer](#): > > Really? Why do you say that, Trinopus? I am puzzled. Well, already addressed upthread, so let me say, instead, that Harlan Ellison did not understand the Star Trek universe in general. (Although, having read the original script, I do think McCoy’s characterization was ungood.) ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2017, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/characters-that-aren-t-understood-by-their-writers/780939/36 "2017-03-05T17:09:00Z")
Anecdote… I once wrote a story about cats and dogs. (Furry/Anthropomorphic.) A friend, reading it, said, “This is obviously a metaphor for blacks and whites in urban America.” I never intended it that way…but I cannot say he is wrong. I didn’t fully understand my own characters. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2017, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/characters-that-aren-t-understood-by-their-writers/780939/37 "2017-03-05T17:37:16Z")
My go-to example is Agatha Christie’s A MURDER IS ANNOUNCED, in which two of the characters are pretty obviously lesbians; Christie apparently denied intending that, since she’d simply based on them on two women she knew in real life, who just happened to live together and had no use for men but, uh, weren’t _lesbians_. So imagine that lines up neatly: that she in fact intended them to be stand-ins for their real-life counterparts; and that she didn’t believe those real-life counterparts were lesbians – and that those real-life counterparts _were,_ unbeknownst to her, lesbians. So if you’re figuring the characters are lesbians, someone arguing with you can effectively relay Agatha Christie’s words on the subject as if Woody Allen were producing Marshall McLuhan to say you know nothing of this work – except it’s as if you can then produce the genuine article to explain Christie to Christie. And so, as is often the case, it’s like a hall of mirrors, but with lesbians. ---
**Author:** ![Lee\_Q](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/aeb1de/32.png) [@Lee\_Q](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lee_Q)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2017, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/characters-that-aren-t-understood-by-their-writers/780939/38 "2017-03-05T17:54:11Z")
> [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](#): > > I refuse to believe that the nerds on Big Bang Theory would be totally unfamiliar with classic Warner Brother cartoons. But that’s how they were written. I’ve never seen BBT but I know not just one but two people who are almost completely unfamiliar with lots and lots of stuff in pop culture that most Americans know better than they know their own families. The reason is the two people I’m talking about grew up in very religious households with no TVs or radios and had extremely limited interactions with anyone who did. I’m not talking about old people, either. One is 32 and the other is 37, both native Americans. Is there something specific about the characters that makes you disbelieve they wouldn’t know cartoons, like maybe they seem to know all kinds of other pop culture references EXCEPT cartoons, or is it more like “Anybody who grows up American knows Warner Brother cartoons”? ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2017, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/characters-that-aren-t-understood-by-their-writers/780939/39 "2017-03-05T18:04:00Z")
> [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#): > > Tolkien didn’t understand Tom Bombadil, or know what role he played in his story or his universe. I don’t get these conversations about Tom Bombadil. Bombadil was an inside family joke puckishly inserted into a work of fiction and people are now trying to grapple with the existential meaning of it all instead of just accepting the fact that Tolkien was having some fun. > [@](#): > > In response to a letter from one of his readers, Tolkien described Tom’s role in The Lord of the Rings: > > Tom Bombadil is not an important person—to the narrative. I suppose he has some importance as a ‘comment.’ I mean, I do not really write like that: he is just an invention (who first appeared in The Oxford Magazine about 1933), and he represents something that I feel important, though I would not be prepared to analyse the feeling precisely. I would not, however, have left him in, if he did not have some kind of function. ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2017, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/characters-that-aren-t-understood-by-their-writers/780939/40 "2017-03-05T18:34:41Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Teaching is definitely this way: usually when I see a teacher on the screen, they’re a saint or a villain, and I roll my eyes. Because what we really all want is to see regular people doing their dull as dishwater jobs, right? Movies and TV are supposed to be entertaining. Watching a judge or a teacher in real life would not be entertaining. For that you should be watching documentaries. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/characters-that-aren-t-understood-by-their-writers/780939.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/characters-that-aren-t-understood-by-their-writers/780939.md?page=3)