While perusing Jump the Shark I came across the following post:
While I have no immediate other examples, this just seems pretty strange to me. Death, tradgedy, meaningless death happens, it is no fun, but what is important is how we come off on the other side of it – (per this same example, look how much stronger Willow became as a result of this horrible moment).
IRL I’d love to have my Mother back, hated having to spend the last 15 years without her, but terrible meaningless death happens and good fiction doesn’t shy away from it.
I guess what I’m asking of Dopers is two-fold:
1.) Is this reaction common?
and
2.) Can we find other examples (outside of Whedon)?
Thanks.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle killed Sherlock Holmes! (And the howl of outrage and piteous wailing, not to mention pressure from his publisher caused him to subsequently make up a way for him to have survived some time later.) That’s one of the more famous examples, if not recent.
Alex Whitman in Roswell!!
erm, excuse me for that outburst. I can’t immediately think of any examples outside joss whedon’s work. (Don’t think Prue’s death in ‘charmed’ was mourned by too many somehow… not that many fans were taking it too seriously at that point, and the introduction of rose mcgowan’s character was handled pretty well.)
With respect to the issues you presented… I’m of two minds. “Death, tradgedy, meaningless death happens” – in real life. Death in art is something fundamentally different I think. Whether or not there is a god who holds our real lives in his hands is something of a great debate, but the creator or creators of a fictional world definitely do have that power over their characters, and I think it’s reasonable to judge them on whether they use that power wisely, and whether they have compassion for their fans who love those characters. Killing off a character in a work of fiction simply because meaningless death happens in real life, to make the piece seem more ‘realistic’ is never something I’ve approved of. Alex’s death in ‘roswell’ was partly modelled after that of a high-school acquaintance of ronald moore’s, apparently, and I never liked how it fit into the series. Joss’ various killings run the gamut a little I think. (He’s never talked much, AFAIK, about any people he knew well who have died and how they influenced his take on death in his writing and his creations… the commentary on ‘the body’ where he equated the concept of God with a ‘sky-bully’ is intriguing though.)
There’s also a much simpler explanation. Grief is no fun, whether it’s grieving over a real person, or a beloved fictional character. A lot of people who dearly loved a favorite character in their TV show will definitely be suffering if they’re killed off and the show continues, and will resent the authors of the show for putting them through that. Reasonable reaction, in my opinion.
preview: (waves at zalabi.) Yes, I wasn’t looking far enough back to think of the master sleuth I suppose. What about spock in ‘star trek 2’??
Actually, I couldn’t think of any specific examples offhand, but O’Brian is certainly an author who doesn’t shy away from killing off sympathetic characters.
I’ve never been able to get back into Trek after (spoilered even though I’m sure everyone knows about this one):
[spoiler]Kirk’s death.
It isn’t even that he was my favorite character. It’s just that some characters shouldn’t die. James Bond shouldn’t die. Sherlock Holmes shouldn’t have died. Some characters are bigger than life. Killing them off, especially on screen, makes them puny and pathetic.[/spoiler]
I hate when an author just up and whacks a long-standing character. In mystery novels, the one that made me most angry was:
Being terrified is no fun, either, but people still go to horror movies. It can be argued that one purpose of art is to allow us to experience and examine certain emotions in safety. Grief and fear are the two best examples of this: things that no one wants to experience in real life, but which are the driving forces behind most significant drama throughout history. I have a hard time seeing negative reactions like the one described in the OP as anything other than a form of cowardice: people are so terrified of anything bad ever happening that they can’t stand to see it, even in fictionalized form with entirely made up characters. What’s worse is, if the shows these people were complaining about were altered to suit them, it would weaken (if not destroy) those elements they want to perserve. I don’t think Joss Whedon would be half as funny if you removed the element of darkness from his shows, the sense that these characters could be wiped out at any moment. There’s a reason that the Greeks symbolism for the theater was a comedic mask and a tragic mask: without the lows of one, you can’t reach the highs of the other. Removing the tragedy from Joss Whedon (or any other author) would be tantamount to castrating him artistically. His work would be sterile, and ultimatly, unfulfilling.
None of the casualties were among my favorite characters, but George R. R. Martin is well-known for his propensity to maim or kill even major characters without notice.
As to the reader reactions to it, I had a friend who was alternately angry, sad, and frustrated with Martin’s tendency to do so. Made the (first two) books too bleak for his tastes, essentially. At my behest, however, he kept reading and now loves the series above almost all others.
Personally, if we’re talking authors killing major characters we loved, there’s always Romeo and Juliet. That story, and almost all variants thereof, gets me every time.
You are welcome to see it as cowardice, but there is an alternative explanation. Let us take physical pain as an analogous example. Some people enjoy pain. There are ways to experience pain ‘in safety’ - without any risk of significant harm. One could experience and examine different kinds of pain. Are those of us who don’t decorate ourselves with scars cowards, then? Or have we felt other pain in our lives and decided, safe or not, we just don’t enjoy pain, and thus avoid unnecessary pain.
I don’t put up with things I don’t like if I don’t have to. It’s common sense.
Or, the symbolism of the mask could have to do with the two major categories of theatric presentations, since ‘drama’ and ‘comedy’ are major distinguishing categories of such to this day. Many dramas will have a little comic relief, and many comedies will have some loose dramatic elements, but in my experience, most movies can definitely be put in one category or the other as a primary.
I won’t spoil any more deaths than, but O’Brian lept to mind reading the OP. After thinking about it, that series unfolds over such a long period of time it would have been unusual for people not to die off.
Death can certainly move the story along, in the last Harry Potter one hell of a shocking death in it, not so much who died but who the killer was.
For me anyways, it’s because once I walk out of that theatre or whatever, it’s over. I’ve been scared, thrilled, but I can leave all that behind. Whereas real life is a never-ending horror. OK, not really, but you get my point.
There is a fairly common phenomenon where the reading (or viewing) public demands more of a given series, which the author is beginning to get tired of. Thanks to what Doyle did to Holmes, it’s referred to as the Reichenbach Falls Syndrome. It’s a case of an author saying, figuratively or literally, “I’m sick of writing about ____. So let me kill off the/a main character; maybe that’ll put an end to it.”
There have been numerous cases of a series “taking off” and the author eventually killing off the main character, or a standard ongoing character, sometimes in an effort to end the series, sometimes not. Fairly recently:
Twenty years after starting the Callahan’s Bar science-fiction series, Spider Robinson eliminated one of the main characters, Doc Webster, in the latest novel in the series, Callahan’s Con.
King’s final book in the Dark Tower series killed off a lot of characters. Some of the deaths had meaning, but
Randal Flagg’s death
Just seemed pointless. One of the biggest characters in the ‘multi-series’, and he’s punked down just to show us how ‘badass’ a new villain is. Said villain
died stupidly, and spent most of his ‘alive’ time sniveling and whining
I’m disappointed if a major character is placed in a situation where death or serious injury is a logical outcome and the author won’t allow it to happen.
Most recent example is in The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay. Too many narrow escapes, and Kay rubbed our noses in it by hinting that a character would die and then someone else took the bullet. Or the arrow, whatever. It certainly lessened the tension, once I figured it out.
I’ve dealt with death in real life, and I can deal with it in fiction too, if it fits the story. I feel cheated otherwise.
I agree. Spider went to the well twice too often with Callahan’s. Of course, I thought he started to lose it with the birth of Erin.
I generally have no problem with an author killing off a character. Of course, if PTerry ever gets it into his head to kill off Granny Weatherwax, we are going to have words!
If I remember correctly, Kurt Vonnegut in Galapagos put asterisks by the names of the characters who were going to die, so that you’d know it was coming.
One author who isn’t afraid to kill off major characters well before the end of a novel is John Irving.
That was a nasty whack that was, I found out about it via the television program first on PBS’ “Mystery!”.