I don’t think I need a character to be sympathetic, but there needs to be at least one character that has some set goals that he pursues in a marginally competent manner. The goals can be evil or unsympathetic, but they have to at least have some rhyme or reason.
This seems to be a problem with dramatic TV series that run past a three or so seasons. The characters either reach a point where their original goals become irrelevant, or to keep the plot going, they become more and more incompetent in perusing those goals.
This is how I felt about The Social Network, which I would place in the fiction category despite its origins in real events. A couple of the characters become more sympathetic toward the end of the story, but most of it was establishing the characters as not particularly good people. It didn’t dehumanize them though. However, what was enjoyable about it was witty dialog and a gripping plot.
I think I feel similarly to Simplicio. I don’t know if it’s sympathy exactly, but I usually have to care about the character enough to hope they achieve their goals in some way. And they need to be, as said, marginally competent. One film I feel this way about is Fargo. Macy’s character I can feel a little sympathy for, but he’s incompetent. The sheriff (McDormand) is very competent but has little for me to care about. The criminals fail on both counts. It doesn’t help that it’s all wrapped up a layer of what seems to be absurd and therefore presumably supposed to be funny, but just isn’t.
Bumbling and dumb people who I ought to care about probably make it worse than if the movie just isn’t concerned with characterization. That’s what makes me dislike the last half of The Silence of the Lambs.
For books in particular, I really have to like the main character. If the main character isn’t someone I want to spend time with, then I’m not going to read the book.
I’m not sure about movies and books, but I know that I’m ok with it in TV.
I ended up hating everyone but Hurley and Jin in Lost but I hated most of the characters so much that I wanted to see what their demise would be more than I wanted to see what happiness awaited Hurley and Jin.
I do not like any characters in Big Love but I couldn’t stop watching them fuck up.
I didn’t like anyone in Heroes, either, but I did not like that show and gave up quickly. Perhaps they were not evil enough or something.
I don’t know if sympathetic is the right term, but I have to identify with someone, even if it’s only a small part of my personality that’s usually overridden, or a small part of the character’s personality that I play up.
Everyone always brings up Seinfeld as having no sympathetic character, for example. But I find I identify with the characters somewhat. I’ve been frustrated like George, thinking stupid wisecracks like Jerry, clueless yet hyperaware like Kramer, and having all that at the same time like Elaine.
On the other hand, I find I cannot get into the Office. I cannot find anything to identify with about the boss or anyone else. There may be stuff I could find if I tried, but I’ve seen so much I don’t identify with that I’m not willing to do that.
I was going to say that no, I cannot. Then I remembered that my favourite novel is *London Fields *by Martin Amis so apparently yes, I can. Not a remotely sympathetic character in the whole thing and yet he makes it work.
I think it’s because I find the writing so astonishingly clever. I have this theory that if you can get away with being mean as long as you’re also extremely clever.
It’s a turn off for me, but not automatically a deal breaker. If it’s a comedy for example, the humor can hold my attention where the characters don’t. But if it’s more serious, then I run into the problem that I’ll end up wanting for all the character to lose, so there’s no tension to the drama. Also, the length of the work matters; a character I only see for the length of a short story doesn’t have the sheer time to irritate me the way a character in a full length movie or TV series does.
To the OP: What is your opinion about “A Clockwork Orange”? I personally like that movie on the grounds of great craftmanship, an interesting story and prodding the viewer to ask himself some hard questions, but the characters are (without exception, at least so I feel) either utterly despicable, nasty, ineffectual, misguided, or all at the same time – Looking at the characters, I can’t help but feel that a nuclear strike would be an improvement on their world.
A whole bunch of unsympathetic people for a movie is fine, but for a TV show that drags on and on… This made me give up Oz after the 4th episode or so, as I really didn’t care in the end about what happened to those unredeemable convicts. Prison Break on the other hand was totally the opposite, addictive to the end.
I can and regularly DO like books, plays and movies with no sympathetic characters. Two that come to mind are:
Glengarry Glen Ross
All of the salesmen are sleazy scumbags. A few are sad sacks as well, but just when you start to feel sorry for them, you learn that one is a thief and start to realize that, for the other sad sack to keep his job, he’ll have to scam some poor sucker into blowing his life savings on worthless real estate.
2. Goodfellas.
Enough said. EVERYONE in this movie is evil. It’s a masterful piece of filmmaking anyway.
My two favorite Tim Robbins movies–The Player and Bob Roberts–are rife with scoundrels, and the most sympathetic characters (played by Greta Scacchi and Giancarlo Esposito) are ones that aren’t looked at very closely.
I realized that this was why I wasn’t bowled over by “Black Swan.” Nina was so tormented and damaged that I wasn’t dismayed by her suicide. In fact, I was relieved for her because she finally escaped her own self-created misery.
“Leaving Las Vegas” is another example where I couldn’t enjoy the movie because I loathed both main characters. I have no idea why the creator thought that watching someone slowly die of alcoholism would be interesting, but I found it to be tedious and depressing. And I still want those 2 hours of my life back.
I used to enjoy Patricia Cornwell’s “Scarpetta” series until Scarpetta evolved into such a humorless, joyless bitch that I didn’t care what happened to her anymore.
For the first couple seasons, I enjoyed The Sopranos despite not liking a single one of the characters; but this is true of me for mob stories in general. I didn’t like any of the Corleones and their various hangers-on either. I enjoyed Watchmen very much even though I found all the characters distasteful to greater or lesser degree. Amusingly, I liked the characters even less in the movie adaptation.
As long as there is a good, solid story, I don’t need anybody to like.
I’ve read plenty of fiction that didn’t have sympathetic characters, and liked it. Recently I read several stories by C.M. Kornbluth. Many of them (like The Mindworm) have no sympathetic characters at all.
There’s also a class of fiction in which the viewpoint changes so much that there is no constant character. Often, in this case, the viewpoint-of-the-moment dies. Even if you like some of the characters, they’re not there for a major portion of the book. Examples are C.S. Forester’s The Gun and Frederick Forsyth’s The Fourth Protocol. I note that when these were turned into films (Forester’s as The Pride and the Passion, they took the multi-narrator plotlines and revised them so that there was a single protagonist, and he was a sympathetic character.