We Could Be Heroes.
Why Main Character Energy will not make you happy.
One of the first things Chris Blaine said when my daughter was born was that I had now become a secondary character.
Codifying Joseph Cambell’s idea of “The Heroes Journey”, Christopher Vogler outlined 7 archetypal characters including the Hero and the Mentor. It was though Blake Snyder in his screenwriting manual “Save the Cat!” who pointed out that when writing a commercial screenplay it’s usually good practice to kill your mentor somewhere around p75. This is sad and raises the stakes but also enables the Hero to finally stand on their own two feet. As Chris pointed out, now I had a child there was someone I would jump in front of bus, or a lightsaber, to save. Someone who I hope would mourn my death but bleakly benefit from it. She was now the protagonist, I a secondary character in her story.
The delusion of our own importance is a necessary balance to the delusion of our insignificance. Two things can be true at the same time. Of course you don’t actually matter but at the same time as you are the only embodied form through which you will ever experience existence you are of central importance, if only to you. Anyway it’s not as if the rest of the world never reinforces your sense of significance. “You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you” is a great line save for the irony that of course the song is about him.
Can we really consider Donald Trump a narcissist when so much of the media so willingly reinforces his sense of himself as the central character in the story of the 21st century? Can we consider Vladimir Putin paranoid when clearly, everyone is out to get him? Even if both are cases of self-fulfilling prophecy, delusions made manifest through an astonishingly futile triumph of the will, the fact that the rest of us fixate on them shows that, whatever other defects exist in their perspective, they are not wrong in their apprehension of their contemporary importance. They are vain, but the song really is about them.
Those of us not a direct threat to the rule of law still face a current moment that is dry tinder for the ego. Individualist, atomised, our view of the world and interactions with it are curated to keep us feeling important, uxorious algorithms constantly reassuring us that we are the customer and so of course we know best. Against this landscape it is a miracle of empathetic strength that we’re not all tiny tyrants kicking in our neighbours’ doors and annexing their PlayStations. However, when formulating “The Heroes Journey” Campbell’s aim was not to lay the template for Star Wars. He was an ethnologist who gathered myths and folk stories from across the globe to find the shared elements, to pull together the common aspects of storytelling that made us human. That he found every culture tends to frame narratives around a central heroic figure does suggest that “Main Character Syndrome” runs deeper than merely being the first stage of Gen Z’s internet psychosis. We cannot know if Roman legionaries, chanting sinister dexter whilst marching in unison, nevertheless each thought themselves the main character in the formation of the Roman Empire; though the long history of soldiers leveraging luck and graft in military adventure to seize power suggests that unquestioning selfless loyalty was never more than a fallen leader’s defeated aspiration.
Still, as a description of diet narcissism, Main Character Syndrome misunderstands what the job of being the main character actually involves. We rarely tell stories about people who are simply lucky enough to have it all. It’s the labours of Hercules, not Hercules’ paid viral influencer brand crossovers. True, heroes do usually end up triumphant, but first they tend to suffer crushing bad luck or make painfully bad choices and must be all but utterly destroyed by failure before achieving a final victory that for many is only experienced in some kind of deified afterlife.
Putin is doubtless an important historical figure. His parents met during the siege of Leningrad, his father rescuing his future bride from beneath a pile of bodies having recognised her shoes, which may account for Vladimir’s startling lack of concern about piles of corpses. That grim quirk aside, he is cautious, serious, and surprisingly risk averse, his past strength often coming from a willingness to remove himself from the spotlight. By comparison Yevgeny Prigozhin is a story you couldn’t make up, he is chaos in boots. To tumble from hot-dog vendor to mercenary war-lord marching on Moscow is a biography that will make an astonishing movie, but does not seem likely to end up a life comfortably lived, or a even one crowned in triumph.
Similarly, and I accept this is an unusual and not entirely fair comparison, England Men’s Cricket Captain, Ben Stokes, is a sportsman born blessed not by luck but narrative. An insanely gifted all-rounder he derailed his career, banned for drunkenly brawling outside a nightclub whilst defending two gay men from the homophobic abuse of Afghan war veteran. Having clawed his way back to sporting glory with an impossible, match winning, hundred in the 2019 Ashes, he is now paired with coach Brendon “Baz” McCullum and together they have formulated “Bazball”, a wildly aggressive approach to a once thoughtful sport. Much discussed in terms of masculinity, team spirit and depression, for me the crucial element is its determination to make the game compelling and uncertain, to make it entertaining, to fill it with narrative. The first test of this summer’s Ashes was masterful sporting storytelling. Stokes’ decisions were bold, brave and ultimately led to defeat, his decision to declare in the first innings his own aborted march on Moscow.
Admitting that sport is entertainment not warfare or work, is dangerous. That thrills ending in defeat are more fun than boredom crowned with victory, lets in the devil that whispers how none of it really matters at all. But for main characters nothing can really matter as everything has to be risked. Arrogance places you and your desires above all else, story demands action.
It’s possible Stokes will yet emerge from the summer vindicated and triumphant, it’s also not certain Yevgeny Prigozhin will be poisoned by Russian secret forces, or that Donald Trump will watch Biden’s inauguration from prison. What makes their lives great stories is not that they are winners, or losers, it’s that they are comfortable existing in chaos. You don’t want to be the main character unless you too can relish the day-to-day business of being compellingly but constantly in trouble.
If you enjoyed this you might like this piece about the relationship between sport and storytelling, or this about the role of pain in narrative and of course fans of Trump the incoherent philosopher of the age will enjoy this about the power of post-truth.
I urge fans of irony to watch the embedded live performance of “You’re So Vain” for the joy of the instrumental break where a lone percussionist strides across the stage playing a cowbell with the insouciance of a man convinced that the song is, if not about him, then at least entirely dependent upon his cowbell to work musically. I also have to admit that I’ve never heard this song the same way since I realised it was possible to replace the chorus with “You’re Ben Blaine, you probably think this song is about you…”
I doubt that “The Accidental Death of Anarchist” at the Haymarket theatre needs my support to shift tickets but do yourself a favour and go see it if you possibly can. Funny, furious, silly and powerful I hope it also sees Daniel Rigby end the year with all the awards for this masterclass of comic power.