You've Got A Lot Of Nerve...
The character always thinks they're right but your story is that they're wrong.
The Operai Del Duomo first commissioned a statue of David in 1464 but it would take 37 years before some 26 year-old kid called Michelangelo got the commission to make good of the unfinished stone. One of the most cherished artefacts of European culture was, for decades, an embarrassing white elephant.
That’s a metaphor. Original artist Agostino di Duccio hadn’t done a great job but he hadn’t given the biblical hero a trunk and massive flapping ears. To be fair, you could argue that even Michelangelo delivered something short of the brief. For a start the finished piece was too heavy to go on the dome of the Duomo as planned, forever spoiling the intended perspective of his oversized hands and head.
Moreover, visiting David for the second time in my life, I realised I’d never really noticed his Davidness. He carries his sling lightly, jauntily even. He’s no warrior, or defender, he is a man in thought or at least not a man in action. Mainly he is a man to gaze on. It is easy to miss that this is the guy who killed Goliath. Yet that’s what the Operi Del Duomo had asked for. Having driven out the Medici and installed democracy, they wanted a symbol of the triumph of the little guy. Ironic then that in this case the little guy is 17ft tall.
Will Storr, in his book “The Science of Storytelling” encourages writers to divine what he calls the “sacred flaw” of their character. The aspect of their personality that, in his words, makes them “feel like David fighting a Goliath”. His argument is not just that we all like to see ourselves this way, as the oppressed facing unimaginable odds, but that we struggle not to see ourselves this way.
I’ve long thought of Taylor Swift as the Millennial Bob Dylan. Both started in country before controversially going electric and both write their best songs about how badly they’ve been let down.
You've got a lotta nerve to say you are my friend
When I was down you just stood there grinnin'
You've got a lotta nerve to say you got a helping hand to lend
You just want to be on the side that's winnin'
I laughed in your face and said
"You're not Dylan Thomas, I'm not Patti Smith
This ain't the Chelsea Hotel, we're modern idiots"
And who's gonna hold you like me? Nobody.
No-fucking-body
We think of pop music as being about love - love lost, love found, love as a handy short-hand for getting up, getting down, getting off and getting on, all of which somehow mean fucking. However for Dylan and Swift the exhilaration is not the falling but the falling out. Even the act of releasing Taylor’s versions, re-recording her back-catalogue to reclaim her rights in the work, is a vast undertaking in the name of fuck you; one oddly mirrored in Dylan’s auctioning off of his work, his final literal sell-out through which he equally manages to reassert some defiant sense of self.
This is the toxic, intoxicating appeal of grievance. A David facing insurmountable odds quickly finds no rules need apply. Audiences love a hero with an axe to grind and grant them freedom to act. Even smart stories like that old noir classic LA Confidential succumb to the logic where the death of a character on our team (Kevin Spacey before he wasn’t allowed to be on any teams anymore) is a narrative changing catastrophe, whilst the casual gunning down of half a dozen non-speaking characters unwittingly on the wrong side is entirely inconsequential.
This is the prize over which the culture wars are fought. Who is most aggrieved? Who is most justified in their anger? Who is the David? Those economically disadvantaged by the colour of their skin or those economically disadvantaged despite the colour of their skin? Those discriminated against because of their gender or those discriminated against because of their change of gender? Those few who had their innocent children murdered or those many who had their innocent children murdered?
These are banal questions, the answers mean less than you think. Victimhood is a hollow prize. A war for territory is cruel, a war for autonomy is remorseless but a war for righteousness is unwinable. Yet if there’s something we crave more than land, more than freedom, it’s feeling right. This, again, is part of what made Dylan and Swift cultural giants, their words in our mouths releasing that blissful freedom of “no, screw you”.
Tragically though, if we had to garland an American laureate of grievance then it would still be Donald J Trump; that graceless David who narrowly faced down his own Goliath moment and lives still to embody his nation’s sense of being hard done by. If, despite Taylor’s endorsement of his opponent, Trump wins in November it’ll prove once more America’s inability to change the record.
All of which is to miss Will Storr’s real point. Fictional characters feel most real when they feel their actions are justified. However, if you’re looking to build a story out of a character then the most compelling journey they can go on is one that forces them to confront the weakness in their position, forces them to see that perhaps they were not David but Goliath, that the problem they started grew from their own misused strength.
This is the power of Michelangelo’s David, a giant who overcomes his opponent less through strength, skill or wit than just sheer radiant perfection. Though this sounds like flattery, perhaps this vast perfect David is more like us than we let ourselves admit. Perhaps we are not the little guy, not the one winning against all odds. For whilst that story appeals, whilst that’s the David we want to be, perhaps the David we are is the giant.
My screenwriting course returns in London and zoom from the 26th of September. Book your place here.
