Isn’t it fun to live vicariously through a fictional character? But isn’t it more bizarre to think of the human capacity to create and create experiences?
Living vicariously through a fictional character is what story telling is about. Enlivening the imagination and motivating the spirit to go out-of-bounds with the external reality of our physical plane. I’m curious about the production and fascination of movies that imbues human characters by animation, and allowing for ultra-human capabilities. My first memory of super hero movies the featured computer animation was “The Mask”.
This image exaggerates the love felt by the hero shown as an oversized heart beating out of his shirt.
A lot of people were thrilled by “Avatar” too. I was personally surprised that it won the Best Picture in 2010. The movie seemed to be a collage of story lines from “Star Wars”, “Thunderdome”, “Water World”, plus other storylines and it was packaged with computer enhanced technology.
Movie has always been a “bigger than life” experience in the beginning because it was literally projecting a story on a big screen. But with the heavy competition for seducing a more sophisticated and pocket-rich audience the movies has had to compete with virtual reality entertainment: from games to social networks (like chat lines) then movie makers have had to produce story telling to an ultra-reality edge. But once the after the credits have rolled by and the people have mozy’ed down the aisle into their parked cars and have made their way literally and figuratively into their enclosed compartments – reality sets in.
We are entrenched in our own dramas. And working through our moments is often harder than watching the hero overcome their own trials and go through their transformation. Our heroes are the archetypes that live in us, and we seek out to identify with characters that make us feel alive.
“I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.
“A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself”
– Joseph Campbell
Go to this link for a lot more from this great thinker.
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/joseph_campbell.html#ixzz1F203bA5v
Without going to the movies think of these special moments, and wonder… how amazing, how bizarre, and how delicate life is:
And the secret is if we can pull ourselves out of our internal spiral is to be curious. Just be curious like a child and relive those moments of wonder. Going back to story, I try to be conscious of the stuff between the beginning and the ending: What made my hero go on this quest and put himself/herself in jeopardy in search of that thing.
Every ending of a journey is the beginning of another. We are our own heroes each day we awaken and create a new day of wonder and wander. Go out there and get lost for a bit and see where you end up. It’s not that scary of a world despite what the news say.
Live to tell the story.
– Analyn Revilla
