Drama is all about change, the word itself stemming from the Greek ‘to move’.  And if you ask what it is that moves, then in most stories, you’re looking at the protagonist.  Which is fine.  We want to see interesting people develop in interesting ways.  And that’s where the problem comes in.

One of the things I’m really glad about is that I didn’t do an English degree.  Apart from the sheer volume of texts that it requires students to consume, it also indoctrinates people at a vulnerable stage of their development into swallowing an essentially Freudian worldview.  And that’s just wrong.  The Freudian paradigm has been pretty convincingly overturned by any number of other perspectives, but English graduates tend to have it installed in them, so they scan texts sniffing for hints of incest, patricide, and all that other good stuff a Viennese guy called Sigmund more than a century ago turned his thoughts to when he sniffed cocaine. 

Quite seriously, I have seen that approach transform people into angst-ridden neurotics who believe that life has a narrative and that they are a character in it, seeking their ‘real’ identity.  Even worse if they combine that Freudian stance with a dose of French critical theory about the death of the author and similar nonsense: the ideas are moderately entertaining for a while, but three years prolonged exposure to them messes people up.

And one consequence of all this is that much popular drama, made as it is by people who have studied English, or maybe Media Studies etc, has an essentially Freudian undercurrent.  Even when you think you’d be on safe ground, watching Star Trek: The Post-Kirk Years, the stories are all too often cheesy tales of father and son bonding, even if the father and son in question have weird lumps on their head signifying that they’re extraterrestrials.  And I just don’t buy the Freudian worldview.  Or so I tell myself.  And then find that I am often attracted to tales of families tormenting one another, because in families you can write stories with bigger emotions than you’ll find most places, and bigger emotions make compelling drama.

Recently, I’ve spent time with a good friend who’s changed significantly since I last had any dealings with them.  And in talking about that, and other people who’ve done something similar, it became clear that for some people, change can be the result of looking at yourself, seeing what does and doesn’t work, and stripping down the stuff that creates problems.  Which really can do the business.  Only, that process of internal change is not very cinematic. 

Some bright spark once commented that it was impossible to film sex or prayer in a way that conveys the sense of communion both can involve.  And it’s the same where the subtle alchemy of personal transformation is concerned.  Not that it stops writers and directors trying.  The usual route is visual metaphor; a haircut following a break-up, or a seagull in a landlocked garden connecting the heroine to her past in a coastal village.  You know the kind of thing.  And that can work…to an extent.  I’ll even buy visual metaphor as an expression of synchronicity, having experienced some spooky examples of it myself.  But even then, what is seen is a reflection of something internal, what happens when the inside and outside become one.

Anyway.  All this is interesting me at the moment having seen someone change, and in developing a very visual metaphor with mythic undercurrents for a protagonist’s journey of transformation in a thriller I’m embarking on.