The James Bond Dilemma

questions
#1

I know, I know, I’m digging up this dead horse to beat some more. But after discussing the MC/Protag. dichotomy on another blog, I got this question again, and I didn’t have a good answer for my interlocutor.

[Rampant spoilers abound]

So the Dramatica definition of the Protagonist is, “The character(s) with the primary Motivations of Consider and Pursue.” (As well as the Purposes of Knowledge and Actuality, the MoE’s of Proven and Effect, and the Methodologies of Certainty and Proaction. This may be important later in the discussion, but for now, we’ll focus on the Motivations.) The Antagonist, by contrast, is defined as, “The character(s) with the primary Motivations of Reconsider and Avoid.” For most stories, especially stories with Heroes, this formula is very cut and dry. Take the Ring to Mordor and destroy it–clear Goal, clear Protag/Antag. Blow up the Death Star and prove the fighting capabilities of the Rebels–clear Goal, clear Protag/Antag. Get back home before [Andy loses us forever|Darla shakes my son to death|AUTO destroys the plant]–clear, clear, clear.

But branch out a bit, and things start to get weird. I’ve named this problem after James Bond, which was @jhull’s classical example. So if Blofeld is hypnotizing girls at an alpine finishing school to make them sleeper agents to destroy major industries… that sounds like a plan to me, one that he’s Pursuing. And James Bond is trying to Prevent that from happening, make Blofeld Reconsider his actions. So… is James Bond the Antagonist, and Blofeld the Protagonist? That… just doesn’t gel based off how the story really feels. Dramatica’s terminology isn’t always 1-to-1 with normal terminology, but if it can’t get it right here, when we’re talking about the quintessential Protagonist!

So we can flip it, I suppose. Claim that the Goal is to stop Blofeld from achieving his Goal, and Bond is the Protagonist of that. But, as my debater put it, this feels incredibly arbitrary. They brought up another movie that really threw me for a loop: Die Hard. The character that is really trying to achieve something is Hans Gruber: he’s trying to pull off the heist of the century, smokescreened behind the guise of a terrorist attack. John McClane, the cowboy, is trying to Prevent this from happening, primarily by alerting the police to the true power and intentions of the thieves. So again, we have to handwave it and say, “Well, we don’t really empathize with Hans Gruber, so since he’s the Bad Guy™, he’s the Antagonist stopping McClane, the Protagonist.” But Dramatica was specifically designed so we wouldn’t have to do this!

This is weird enough, but what if we want the MC to be the Antagonist, like How to Train Your Dragon? Again, you have to semi-arbitrarily say, “Well, the Goal everyone’s centered around is bad, and the MC is a rebel against it.” Which I totally get–through most of the story, Hiccup does at least pretend to go along with the “Viking training” central plot. But if John McClane’s anti-evil actions make him the Protagonist, why don’t Hiccup’s? What is the difference between Hans Gruber’s heist and Stoick’s genocide?

(I wanted to bring up Shakespeare’s Othello, and how Iago’s Goal of ruining Othello’s life is the only thing driving the plot, but I don’t have anything more to say about that. So… Othello.)

I’ve been going over some of the different possible solutions to this question. Maybe the answer is just that determining the Goal is somewhat arbitrary, but that makes it hard to analyze for veterans and confusing to pick up for newbies. Another thought I had was, “Maybe the bad guy is being Proactive, but they’re still Preventing the Goal,” but that just seems to be moving the problem without solving it. I’ve considered the possibility of “the Antagonist creates a status quo they try to maintain, and the Protagonist tries to break it,” which solves the examples I’ve given but I don’t think necessarily matches every story. What are all your thoughts? Is there a clear, principled way to determine the Goal in such a way that the Protagonist and Antagonist make intuitive sense? Or is the arbitrary nature of it inevitable?

I’m glad to see people are making conversation out of a post I’d given up on thanks to early negative response. …Still not coming back, though. :stuck_out_tongue:

#2

How is that even remotely “arbitrary”? If the determination of the Goal of a story and the positioning of the forces around it “arbitrary”, that means every choice made by the Author is “arbitrary”.

In fact, every choice IS arbitrary if you’re looking at story superficially.

This sounds like someone trying to argue for the absoluteness of story without the sophistication of understanding the model of the Storymind that really is at the heart of functioning stories.

It doesn’t matter who is Pursuing or who is Preventing–keep it consistent and in good relation with the Story Goal and the model of the Storymind will be complete.

Story is an analogy to a single human mind trying to solve a problem. Everything else is secondary and “arbitrary”.

I assume by your title you’ve read this processs for determining Protagonists

Oh, and we need links to the other blog for laughs :slight_smile:

#3

I’m with you @actingpower. I’ve gone through all those options as well.

As for whether the goal is arbitrary, IF each character in a story represented an entire human mind, then I think the goal would be arbitrary. Every character would be their own protagonist. Therefore the MC, as the audience’s window into the story, would always be the one we accept as the story protagonist.

But if you accept Dramatica, then each character in a story represents only a portion of a human mind and it takes all of them to add up to one human mind. So while each character has their own purposes and motivations and thoughts on the goal, the story itself, as a single mind, should only be able to see the goal as one thing.

That said, I still don’t know a great all-encompassing solution for how to make peace with MC-as-antagonist/good-guy issue. But I think a lot of it has to do with the connotations we bring to Dramatica terminology. Because we are used to thinking of an antagonist as a bad guy or a villain, it doesn’t feel right to think of JB as an antagonist. But if you move beyond the traditional meaning and only look at the Dramatica definition, I think the problem goes away. If you replace protagonist and antagonist with Thing1 and Thing2, would we still have a problem saying that Blofeld represents Pursue and Bond represents Avoid? I wouldn’t think so.

Way I see it, Bond and MI6 or whatever they are called are pursuing peace in general, but as far as any one story is concerned the specific Goal isn’t keeping overall general peace, but preventing the plot that is disrupting the peace. And I presume Blofelds goal isn’t to avoid peace(unless he’s like the Joker and just wants to create chaos, I don’t know, I haven’t seen many Bond films). It’s to destroy major industries. I again presume, but as far as the story being told, i would think he’s not avoiding industry (at least not within the OS, maybe as a personal issue) but pursuing destruction. So that’s where the goals of the separate characters come together. One is pursuing destruction, the other avoiding.

Edit: jims article explains that Bond is theoretically the antagonist but in practice is the protagonist as he is for the resolution of the inciting incident, which would also seem to solve die hard. that makes sense. going to have to watch the beginning of How to Train Your Dragon again to figure out how it works in that one, though)

#4

We get into trouble explaining Dramatica when we put the cart before the horse, i.e. if we let “pursuit vs avoid” lead the discussion, we’re going to tie ourselves in knots and then our would-be listeners will cry foul when we suddenly remember that the Story Goal defines these things.

  1. We have a narrative world at rest. A house of cards full of dramatic potential energy, yes, but at rest. (Or if you want, think of it as inertia).

  2. Then an inequity appears, and everything’s out of order.

  3. The Story Goal arises to restore order.

  4. Now we can talk about Pursuit, Avoid, and the whole lot – not before.

When a Bond villain does his thing, he’s introducing inequity into a world in some form of inertia, usually a Cold War where no shots are being fired. So naturally a Story Goal arises to put the villain out of commission and make sure those shots stay un-fired.

Who chiefly pursues this in practically every film? James Bond the Protagonist.

It’s tempting to confuse character bios with dramatic functions, “Oh he seems like a Hinder kind of guy…” but the bio is irrelevant to the OS function. All that matters is what that character will do in response to the Story Goal.

Can the bio inform how a character will respond to the Goal? Potentially, but not necessarily. A cop with a drinking problem may hinder his wife’s attempts to pay the bills, but when a public bombing happens in his jurisdiction, it may light a fire in his belly and you find he’s the first guy at the police chief’s door asking how he can help track down the culprit. His backstory sounds like Hinder, but his OS function is Help.

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#5

Yay! This exactly. Going to use this in future explanations. Thanks.

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#6

I don’t know if anyone has done any breakdowns of the films in question according to Dramatica (there aren’t any on the website), but I wonder if part of the confusion here might stem from incomplete storyforms underpinning the movies?

This dilemma you’re describing reminds me of one that I had while I was working out the correct storyform for my current novel. I wrote the first draft of this novel with no exposure whatsoever to Dramatica, and thus created a bit of a mess for myself. It took me months to realize that the reason why I was struggling to even assign roles to my characters (antagonist, protagonist, etc.) was because the story I had written was actually built from two partial and competing storyforms I had (messily) welded together. The first half of the book had Character 1 as the MC and Character 2 as the IC, whereas the second half of the book had Character 2 as the MC and Character 3 as her IC! Thus, my confusion over who was the Antagonist and who was the Protagonist stemmed from the fact that the answers were different in each storyform. In storyform 1, Character 1 was the Antagonist, with Character 2 as the Protagonist. In Storyform 2, Character 2 was the Antagonist, and Character 3 the Protagonist, etc. So, who was the “real” Antagonist of my story?

I went back and forth on this for months! The problem was that, with each storyform being partially constructed, I could “see” it either way; i.e. I could “see” Character 1 as the antagonist, as well as Character 2 as the antagonist. But because neither storyform was complete in and of itself, neither argument was entirely convincing, either. My confusion remained until I finally just picked one storyform for the entire novel (the one I liked best), which made Character 2 both the MC and the Antagonist, Character 1 the Protagonist, and Character 3 the Contagonist and IC.

What I’m getting at here is this: the question of who a story’s antagonist is can only really be answered when the storyform is complete. Otherwise, there will always be some subjective “wiggle room” remaining in how a reader chooses to reconstruct the storyform in their head. If the story’s argument as presented to the audience is incomplete, the reader will have to fill in the gaps themselves. And it may be the case that several different complete storyforms might still be viable given what remains undefined. One reader/viewer may “choose” to reconstruct one complete argument out of the partial storyform, where another reader/viewer reconstructs another. Neither is wrong, because the creator of the story has neglected to fully define their argument in a way that eliminates all but one potential storyform as the correct one.

It’s like that optical illusion, where one person might look and see a vase, while the other sees two faces leaning in towards a kiss. Well, which is it: a vase, or two people’s faces? The answer depends on context. It is the author’s job to provide us enough context to be able to determine without a shadow of a doubt whether what we’re seeing is ACTUALLY two people, or just a vase. This figure/ground reversal in the audience’s mind will remain possible only so long as the author neglects to define which is which.

So is James Bond the Protagonist engaged in an active pursuit of a story goal of “maintaining the peace” or “stopping the bad guy,” or is it truer to say that the “Bad Guy” in question is the story’s real Protagonist, I.E. the guy who’s trying to achieve the story goal of “building the death ray” (or whatever), while James Bond is just the Antagonist, i.e. the guy who’s trying to prevent that story goal from being realized? So long as the storyform is incomplete, the answer may well be: it depends on how you look at it. Unless the writer has supplied us with enough context, there may be no truly “correct” answer, because the correct answer was never actually specified within the story’s argument to begin with.

#7

But the Bond movies are told from James Bond’s perspective and in most of the movies, Bond is completely unaware of what the ‘big bad guy plot’ is! He can’t possibly work on ‘preventing’ the death ray, because he doesn’t know the death ray exists until near the third act!

As a character, Bond is pursuing answers; pursuing bad guys; etc. If the story were flipped around so, say, Blofeld was the main character – Bond would maybe be the prevent character but I still think he’s fundamentally a pursue character.

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#8

Yeah, but to be fair, when it comes to their role in the Objective storyline, it really doesn’t matter whether a character is aware of the role that they play or not. Everyone is the hero of their own story, after all, but from an objective point of view, the question can only be what their function is in the broader narrative. I’m not saying you’re wrong; he may very well be best described as the Protagonist in at least some of the films. But I’m not convinced that his internal state of mind tells us very much at all about what his objective role in those stories actually is.

And it’s worth reifying that James bond can well be the main character without being any particular objective character. Blofield doesn’t have to be the MC to be the Protagonist.

#9

Darn! Rookie mistake! Protagonist does not equal Main Character!!! My bad. I should know that. Also I don’t know why I stressed the thing about him being aware in an OS throughline. Clearly I was either tired or dead when I wrote that post. It’s incoherent. Sorry about that.

But my point was meant to be: our perspective in the Bond movies is always focused on what Bond is doing in relation to the goal. He’s pursuing information, he’s hunting down the bad guys, he’s jetting off across the world in the hopes of finding something. He’s constantly in pursuit, even in car chases and things. I think my point about him not being aware of the stuff was that he can’t prevent something he doesn’t know about, but even that’s kind of nonsense.

He definitely has other elements, too, which factor into the objective role and make him feel slightly different from story to story (particularly in Casino Royale). But the one constant is his pursuit characteristic. He’s never trying to avoid or prevent, he’s the one pushing forward – as opposed to the bad guys, who try and prevent Bond from getting close enough to stop them.

I have no idea what the hell I was trying to say four hours ago. This is a lesson: don’t discuss Dramatica distracted.

#10

No problem! We’ve all been there!

I think it may be worth taking another look at the way Dramatica defines “avoid,” arguably the key characteristic of an antagonist:

“Like its counter-part, Pursue, the Avoid characteristic causes a character to be a real self-starter. The difference is, just as strongly as Pursuit tries to close in on the something, Avoid tries to escape it. Avoid can take the forms “escape” or “prevent,” depending upon whether the focus of the effort is an object or a process. Avoid might be seen as running away, but that has its place. And certainly, when seen as “prevent,” it might be applied to stopping something very negative from happening. Of course, it could also prevent something positive or really just be running away from something that should be faced. Pursue and Avoid are not value judgments but directions.”

So, as you can see, a character with this element may be quite active in “pursuit” of their aims, and in absence of sufficient context may indeed appear to be “pursuing” their own goals in the Dramatica definition of the word. And since “pursuit” and “avoid” are a dynamic pair, they can blend into one another quite easily. They are the two ends of one spectrum, so to speak, and thus it can be easy to confuse one for the other, especially when it comes to the main character.

But my point was meant to be: our perspective in the Bond movies is always focused on what Bond is doing in relation to the goal. He’s pursuing information, he’s hunting down the bad guys, he’s jetting off across the world in the hopes of finding something.

But if Bond is the main character, we’re by definition going to be focused on what he’s doing in relation to the goal. The MC throughline provides us our “I” into the story, the personal POV through which we view the events that unfold. Thus the story will always be “focused” on his actions, regardless of whatever role he plays in the overall story throughline; i.e. whether he is the antagonist or the protagonist or something else entirely.

And furthermore, because we see the story “through his eyes,” we’re inclined to see his justifications as truth unless we are given enough context by the other throughlines to unequivically demonstrate that he is in error. In other words, he may very well think he is the protagonist, and we will be inclined to take him at his word, regardless of whether he is correct in this belief or not, simply because he is the MC and we empathize with him.

Take Humbert Humbert, who spends the majority of Lolita trying to convince us that his role in the OS is different than what it would appear to be, just based on the facts:

“Frigid gentlewomen of the jury! I had thought that months, perhaps years, would elapse before I dared to reveal myself to Dolores Haze; but by six she was wide awake, and by six fifteen we were technically lovers. I am going to tell you something very strange: it was she who seduced me.”

In other words, he’s not the protagonist, he’s the antagonist. Dolores seduced him, not the other way around. He knows the overall story goal of “seducing a child” is reprehensible, so his only hope of defense is to portray himself as the one seeking to avoid that goal’s realization. And so crafty is his manipulation that many readers are inclined to believe him, or at least to sympathize with his “plight.” That’s what the empathy of the MC throughline allows; it prejudices the reader to share the views of the MC, even if that MC is wrong, or worse, actively deceitful. And this is why we need all four throughlines to be complete in order to work out what really happened in a given story; we need all four to be able to determine whose justifications are correct, and whose are in error.

So what I’m getting at here is, with these movies: who are the influence characters? What are the relationship throughlines? Without those throughlines, we lack adequate information to understand what argument is even being made by the story, and thus what roles the various characters play in the articulation of that argument. My contention is that most (if not all) of these films fail to articulate a complete argument at all, as many of them lack entire throughlines! The RS is supposed to be the mirror of the OS; without one, we can never completely define the other. This doesn’t mean that the James Bond films aren’t fun to watch or interesting or memorable in some regards. But if they aren’t making complete arguments, then determining which characters play which roles will probably always be a bit tricky, because these roles only have true meaning in context of complete arguments, which (I believe) have not been made by these films.

#11

Hey, I really do like your list, but I’m not sure I see how it gets us out of trouble with the James Bond films. Specifically, I’m having trouble with step number 2, given how I’ve come to understand the Dramatica definition of “inequity:”

I’m reminded of this article, about how the inequity of a story begins:

To quote Jim: “A car is not a problem. The desire for a car is not a problem. What does create the potential for a problem is the space between the two: the human mind sees this space as an inequity. When faced with an inequity you have two choices: resolve the inequity or justify it away.”

So, to my mind, wouldn’t the central inequity of a James Bond story arise when the villain wants something (total control/ultimate power/his mother’s love) that he does not have/cannot easily get? It would then be at the precise moment that he becomes aware of this inequity that the world of the story mind is thrown out of order, and a goal to resolve that inequity is created.

Put another way:

  1. Narrative world at rest. There’s a budding supervillain lying around somewhere in Transylvania, bored out of his gourd. (We may not see this moment onscreen, but that doesn’t mean it’s not technically part of the story structure).

  2. The inequity appears when something makes him aware of the difference between what he wants (World domination) and what he has (some dinky little lair somewhere in Transylvania). His world is out of order from this point out. He wants something he doesn’t have, and thus feels a need to do away with the space between the two.

  3. A story goal arises (build death ray powerful enough to conquer world) to resolve this inequity. Of course, The villain chooses to solve his problem by seeking to control the world. Maybe in another film, he just goes to counseling to find his happy place. . .

  4. NOW we can talk about pursuit/avoid/ the whole lot. The villain thus takes the first step of pursuit by ordering more titanium for his death ray prototype. Bond later comes in to stop him; i.e. prevent the realization of the story goal.

Maybe this is just a chicken/egg type deal. But saying that we should “start” the story with Bond’s central inequity seems rather arbitrary to me, especially given the fact that his inequity would not exist but for the villain’s inequity that preceded it. No matter how you slice it, the villain seems to be the “source” of the problem here.

I mean, why is the villain doing what he does? Shouldn’t the story mind care what his motives are, so as to either argue for or against them as true or false justifications? Presumably something is prompting him to seek world domination, right? In which case, whatever that thing might be would be the true inequity of the story that is demanding resolution of some kind.

Unless we believe that Bond villains have no inequity in their hearts that drives them to act and that they do evil just because, in which case Bond might as well be being attacked by flying rocks for all it matters to the argument the story is making. And if that’s the case, then I’m REALLY missing something here. . .

#12

In most Bond movies, the villains could effectively be replaced by charismatic flying rocks, yes.

On a side note: you could frame a grand story argument as describing an appropriate way of achieving a certain goal (in a success story). From an author’s point of view, does it look like the Bond stories are trying to make an argument about how (or why) to take over the world (or whatever the villain tries to do)? Probably not.

I’m aware that quite a few people look at the “Villains act, Heroes react” trope and prefer the villains for being ambitious and trying to accomplish stuff, while the heroes are just there to stop them; maybe they even frame the story as a tragedy. BUT that doesn’t change that, in most cases, the author did not view it this way. Presumably, Dramatica is supposed to look at stories from the author’s perspective.

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#13

You’re plucking a cross-section (in this case the “villain”) out of the Overall Story and treating it like a Main Character - that isn’t quite how the justification breakdown works. If you apply it to the OS, you apply it to the entire OS, not just one member of it. In fact, the Overall Story Throughline already does this: Problem & Solution, Symptom & Response, Issue & Concern, etc., all layers of justification, but at the bird’s eye view. It’s a separate consideration from how the OS cast functions in relation to the Story Goal.

The central inequity doesn’t belong to any one character or throughline. They are all attempting to triangulate it, but no one facet of the storyform pins it down in totality, like the Blind Men and the Elephant.

Admittedly, my step 2 above is a bit shorthand. If I were to be more detailed (and thus more accurate), I would say that the Story Driver comes along and either creates or reveals the inequity. But for the sake of brevity I focused on the inequity’s importance, rather than the various ways it may come to light.

And as you say above, this could all be smoke without a fire, because how many Bond films have a complete storyform in the first place? Most of them are strictly OS and often lack an MC Throughline, as James himself rarely brings any personal, subjective problems to the table.

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#14

Determining who is the protagonist and antagonist in a story, such as Goldfinger, is not arbitrary.

One way to look at this is to look at the Story Outcome as how it relates to what you believe is the author’s intent.

For example, in Goldfinger:

Do you believe that the author’s intent is for the goal to be to Irradiate the gold in Fort Knox to drive up world wide gold prices…

OR is it to stop Goldfinger from irradiating the gold in Fort Knox to drive up world wide gold prices (while destroying the U.S.economy)?

  • Goldfinger is the proponent of driving up gold prices by irradiating Fort Knox.
  • James Bond is the proponent of preventing the irradiation of Fort Knox.

Then ask if the author’s intent was for the goal to be achieved (Success) or not (Failure)?

  • If the story ends with a “happy ending”, then the story outcome in Success.
  • If the story ends with a “tragedy”, then the story outcome is Failure.
  • If the story is bittersweet, and it seems that the story ends well for most everyone in the OS, then the story outcome is likely success.
  • If the story is bittersweet, and it seems that the story ends poorly for most everyone in the OS, then the story outcome is likely failure.

The combination of those two questions should help you determine who the protagonist is and who the antagonist is.

In Goldfinger, Fort Knox is not irradiated by Goldfinger. It is my sense that the film has a “happy” ending, which means that the story outcome is Success and James Bond, the proponent for preventing Fort Knox from being irradiated, is the protagonist, and therefore Goldfinger is the antagonist.

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#15

Thank you, Mr. Huntley! I really appreciate that. Couple of follow-up questions:

  1. Do you think the author’s intent in Die Hard is for Hans Gruber to pull off his heist?

  2. Do you think the intent of the writers for How to Train Your Dragon was for the Viking kids to become masters of the craft and kill rather than befriend the dragons?

#16

Aren’t these stories about training them to protect the citizens?

#17

The author’s intent in How to Train Your Dragon was for the Goal to not succeed. This isn’t to say that the Authors weren’t rooting for Hiccup, but they were also rooting for the efforts of the elders to fail. A clear change in how things are done. There is a clear bittersweet feeling to the ending that feels more Personal Failure than Personal Tragedy.

As far as Die Hard goes, it’s clear that it is a Triumph with everything from Bruce reuniting with his wife to happy Christmas music playing in the background. Bruce is therefore Protagonist in the eyes of the author.

(Sorry, I know you asked Chris, but I couldn’t resist)

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#18

Yea, what Jim said. :wink:

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#19

I sometimes have this same confusion. For example, I used the website filter and googled narrativefirst to search for Success/Good movies in order to find “happy endings.” Two results were “House of Yes” and “Nightcrawler.”

I would wager that 1) 100 out of 100 viewers would say these are not happy endings and that 2) 100/100 viewers would say the author intended these to be cautionary tales (i.e. don’t go down this road). Or cautionary grand argument stories.

In short, it’s hard for me to write (or find) a sentence that clearly distinguishes between Jackie-O Pascal and Goldfinger. Or between Lou Bloom and The Joker. At the end of Nightcrawler I thought, “this could be the origin story prequel for The Dark Knight’s Joker.”

Leaving aside the question of “is Jackie-O / Lou truly in a good emotional state at the end?” I get MC / good / bad in terms of MC angst or emotional state. But it confuses me that “House of Yes” and “Nightcrawler” are “OS success–the author’s intended story goal has been achieved.”

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#20

That’s the great part about Nightcrawler–it seems like a dastardly ending, yet the argument the Author makes is one of Triumph!

Dramatica is awesome because it doesn’t take into account subjective opinions regarding the appropriateness of someone’s actions by cultural or ethical standards–but rather by purely objective means: did the Protagonist successfully achieve their Goal? And in Nightcrawler, he does.

This affords Authors a better understanding of what their story means and the opportunity to fully communicate a message without the trappings of society.