Pop Vultures

Dan kicked things off yesterday with a look at how television is a more social experience than film. Today, it’s my turn to consider why television is so much better at creating characters — particularly if you have XX chromosomes.

It took me a long time to admit that I liked television better than film. Film, you see, is an art form. Film is Fellini and Hitchcock and Scorsese; television is David E. Kelly and Jay Leno and Jerry Springer. Film is respectable, but those who watch television should feel shame for wasting their days.

I’m over that now, and not just because I decided to live my life with absolutely no sense of shame (though that helps). I’m a television blogger, I’ve taught media studies, and I’m about to start a masters degree in television studies. I’ve thought about this stuff, and there’s a fair amount to think about. I keep coming back to one clear, objective fact: television does lots of things much, much better than film.

Film may win in the cinematography or A-list actor category. It owns the special effects battle, hands down. I’ll even give it soundtracks and editing. Really, it should win all these, since it has the budget to do so. The one place, however, where film is consistently beaten to a bloody pulp by television is in the character category. When it comes to creating rich, believable, complex characters, television is the playground bully kicking sand in the scrawny face of film.

Some of the reasons for this are obvious. Television has more time to build and develop characters, to reveal their quirks and contradictions. It allows them to change over time, just as (gasp) real people do. Though film characters can and do change, these changes are usually based on external events that cause the hero to react and adapt. In television, characters may react to outside influences, but they’re just as likely to develop in relation to their community. They grow because of relationships, their environment or sometimes because they just get older. Film is based on the hero’s journey, in which characters must become something grand and, well, heroic in two hours’ time. Television needs to create characters we relate to so that we keep tuning in week after week. Heroes are all well and good, but as someone who’s far more likely to spend a day mastering the hammer on in Guitar Hero than in saving the empire, I’ll take TV any time. Film is escapism. Television, I believe. (This is not an absolute, of course; I have yet to find a single thing worth believing on One Tree Hill, but I’ll still escape there once a week.)

Even more than that, television offers something film doesn’t seem to bother with: female characters that don’t suck. Women in films don’t have a whole lot to do, you see. They get to be the love interest for the man, of course. Sometimes they get to be the source of conflict between a couple of men. If they’re really lucky, they might get to be the moral compass for some misguided man who will eventually see the light and become, of course, the hero. Women are almost exclusively relegated to secondary roles, complete with secondary character development. Some excellent actresses will do their best work with what they’re given, but at the end of the day, they are little more than catalysts for the men.

If you think I’m exaggerating, have a look at the top films for 2007 and 2008. In 2007, the top ten films all feature male leads. Spiderman 3, which claims the top spot, could be the annoyingly overproduced poster child for my point. Mary Jane is the love interest that men fight over, and she frequently looks at Peter Parker with disappointment in her eyes, letting him know that he’s on the wrong moral path. Of course, despite all this moral superiority, all she really does in the film is serve as villain bait. Also, she screams. A lot.

In fact, in 2007, the first film with a female lead is Juno – all the way down at #15. With Enchanted at #20, that gives us two – count ‘em, TWO — films in the top 20 with interesting female leads. In 2008, Sex & the City made it into the top ten, at least. Still, I’m not ready to have a big old dance party about that, when Iron Man, The Dark Knight, Indiana Jones, Hancock and Kung Fu Panda all claim the top spots.

(And, please, please don’t argue that people just don’t want to see women in lead roles, as that will make me very grumpy. Give me a Hollywood film with a female lead that’s as well scripted and directed as The Dark Knight, rather than, say, Elektra, and then we’ll talk.)

Television has given us Buffy, Scully, Bones, Betty Suarez, Roslin and Starbuck. Hell, it gave us Xena, for which I will always love it. Even in male-dominated shows, the female is given more to do than stare at the man adoringly and/or with reproach in her eyes. Burn Notice may belong to Jeffrey Donovan, but Gabrielle Anwar’s ass-kicking Fiona can certainly hold her own. Lost may often be about the battle between Jack, Locke and Ben, but Sun and Kate are given plenty of meaty things to do. The man’s world of Mad Men gave us Peggy, one of the more complex women currently on television. Even in television’s version of the hero’s journey, a show subtly called Heroes, the gender balance is fairly even, as is the allocation of interesting powers.

It’s not just women that get the short stick in films. If you’re not Will Smith, black actors don’t make out that well, either, unless they want to play the Sassy Sidekick or the Mystical Black Person (a close cousin to the Female Moral Compass). Gays, of course, are all but invisible in the top 20, unless you count 300 (which you probably should, all things considered). Basically, if you want to watch male heroes save the day, film is the medium for you. For everyone else, it’s television.

So, film creates the same damn hero over and over again, while television gives us fully developed roles that represent wide swathes of the population. Which one is art, again?