Hyperdrama character

At its heart, hyperdrama is a story told in service of a moral lesson. Character, plot, tone, all serve that overriding purpose. The moral lesson might be focused on personal behavior, for example. The main character in Bunuel s The Criminal Mind of Archibald Cruz is convinced that he committed a crime (murder) as a child. We know that he did not. However, he conducts his life and relationships in an aura of guilt and in the expectation that if he becomes too close to anyone, in a love relationship for example, he will again become a murderer. The moral lesson of Bunuel s film is that we are all prisoners of our childhood experiences, whether they are negative or positive. How useful or not this imprisonment is goes to the core of Bunuel s goal in this film. 

In melodrama, the main character provides the direct means to identify with the outcome of the narrative. In hyperdrama, identification with the main character is less important. The main character is only the means or vehicle for the narrative. Consequently, we experience the character more as an observer rather than the stronger role of participant. We view the main character s alienation and depression in Frankenheimer s Seconds, but do we feel deeply about his fate In a melodrama we would here we do not. We remain detached from Lauzon s Leolo, a young boy so alienated from his family that he creates a new identity (Italian instead of French-Canadian) rather than be identified with it. As he says, "I dream and therefore I am not [a member of this family]." He is detached, and so too are we. 

In Boorman s Excalibur we observe Arthur, the idealistic and cuckolded king, but we do not identify with him. We position ourselves far more easily with Merlin the magician, a man above the worldly and otherworldly goings-on of Excalibur. We understand, and even like, the character of Forrest Gump, but do we identify with him I think not. In hyperdrama, the main character is the important vehicle for the story, but no more than that. 

The journey is substantial, and therefore the amount of plot tends to be considerable. In a sense, the degree of plot in hyperdrama is so great that it makes the main character either a superhero or a "supervictim."... 

The authorial voice is quite muted in melodrama and overarching in docu-drama, but in hyperdrama it is powerful and passionate. After all, the goal of hyperdrama is the moral lesson, with the main character the vehicle for that lesson. In fact, the goal of the writer in hyperdrama is to convey that voice despite the viewer s involvement with the story. That is not to say we do not care for Dorothy in The Wizard ofOz. Rather we are much more aware of the writer s views on childhood, play, and the importance of the imagination. At its heart, the film is about the importance of hope in a child s life this is what we take away from the experience of The Wizard of Oz. 

The writer views himself or herself as a moralist, exploring moral choices and issuing cautions or recommendations for how we the audience should proceed in the world. This is above all the goal of the writer in hyperdrama. In order to do so, the writer looks for the most elemental means—simplicity of character, a basic conflict, and an imaginative journey, which together will make the point for the audience. 

The Tin Drum has a great deal of plot, as one would expect in a hyperdrama. But it also has many character scenes. The character layer, however, is never developmental. Oscar is principally the child, and the adults seem transient in his world they exit, or they die. Only the grandmother provides any continuity for Oscar. 

This, however, still leaves many options. Stories about children often lend themselves to the moral tale. They also lend themselves to excess and fantasy. A good example here is Peter Brook s Lord of the Flies. Novels such as Orwell s Animal Farm have their filmic equivalent in George Miller s Babe in the City. Stories about animals, such as the above mentioned, are naturals for hyperdrama. So too are stories set as fables. Even a film like Warren Beatty s Heaven Can Wait becomes hyperdrama when issues of birth, rebirth, angels, and Heaven become active elements of the narrative. Finally, stories about mythical figures or periods, such as Vincent Ward s The Navigator, work well as hyperdrama. In these stories, the characters are either archetypal or they are metaphors serving the moral tale that is at the heart of the narrative. 

Character in hyperdrama has to be a vehicle for the story rather than a source of identification for the viewer. We have to stand apart from the character. Consequently, it s not important that we care deeply about the character. But it is important for us to understand the character and why the individual does what he or she chooses to do. 

The story is narrated by someone. It is told as a cautionary tale, a life lesson, so that the child will see in the fate of the character a warning to him or herself. But that tale has to be told in such a way as to grip the child s imagination. Also, the resolution has to contain the message, the moral, and the reason for the telling. Always, the teller, the narrator, is outside the story (as we are), looking in. This is the approach so often used in children s fairy tales, and it is useful in conceptualizing a story in the hyperdrama form. 

The short film is actually a more natural form for hyperdrama. The long film, with its complexity of character and relationships, is more immediately compatible with realism. The short film, with its relationship to the short story, the poem, the photograph, and the painting, is a more metaphorical form, and thus it adapts easily to hyperdrama. 

Plot is very important in hyperdrama. It provides the scale of the story. Unlike in other genres, it is critical to the success of the narrative. In the short film, the plot will have far more effect than character. The resulting sketchiness of the characters helps the metaphorical presentation of the narrative. 

Hyperdrama requires such excess to assure the foregrounding of the moral (the voice of the author) over any identification with the character in the narrative. 

Perhaps the most we can say about these characters is to see them as obsessed, to understand their behavior as habitual (they reject themselves a good deal of the time), and consequently, to care about their fate, rather than to see ourselves in them. These observations make us curious as to the reasons for their desire and the consequent self-abnegation. Unlike in hyperdrama, where the character serves a moral purpose or goal, no such purpose is obvious for the characters in experimental narrative. They are abstract... 

---