Building Character

Taha from Palestine is a trained film maker and is helping the E-music students with directing. Photo: Elias Helfer.

This week at the school is Main Subject week. The theme of the week is What a Beautiful waste of Talent, inspired by the project by Tomace. We’ve chosen ten characters that we are working with in in different ways in each of the six Main Subject (Art, Band, Journalism, Singer, E-music and Theology, Existence and Enlightenment). This has led to many interesting projects around the school, including a “Frogumentary,” and one guy’s quest to find the perfect princess, armed with a camera and a daffodil.

Storytime!

All the characters (I’ll describe them below) are fictional, found in literature, folklore, mythology and legends. As such they’re all part of stories - and story is turning out to be a theme of the week as much as characters. You can’t have a story without characters, but you can’t have a character without a story, either.

Three journalism students working on their “frogumentary”. Photo: Elias Helfer

So what makes a story? In a word, conflict! Story arises when the balance between forces in the world is upset. That’s what we’re seeing in the Middle East in these days: the balance between the peoples and regimes in the region has been upset, creating change and story - HIstory.

Because imbalance is the cause of story, the slogan of the week is “Challenge the Balance” (which we manage to pronounce in a way that makes it rhyme).

The Characters

Like I said, we have chosen ten characters to work with. They are, in no particular order:

  • The princess. We all know her (particularly from Disney): pretty, adorable, proper, nice… boring… Of course there’s also the other princess, the spoiled, bratty, superficial, materialistic girl. And the odd ones, like Pocahontas and Tatterhood.
  • The frog. The repulsive, slimy creature who becomes a prince when the princess kisses him… or does he? In the original version of Grimm’s Tales, he didn’t become a prince until the princess threw him into the wall. Like a stinking boy with a croaky voice and puss-filled pimples, he doesn’t become a man untill he’s treated rough by a woman… Also, Shrek.
  • The Shadow. We all have a shadow. But the shadow doesn’t exist in itself - no light, no shadow. And no thing, no shadow. The shadow hangs in the balance between light and darkness, and as such, its moral state is questionable. The shadow has been a popular image in our culture. Plato used it to illustrate the status of perishable things on earth. Hans Christian Andersen wrote a tale about it. And Jung named one of the most important archetypes after it.
  • Loki. The trickster god of Norse mythology. He is one of the Jotuns, the enemies of the gods, but he is Odin’s blood brother, and thus to be regarded as one of the Asir. In that way, he is like the shadow: standing at the balance between the gods and their enemies. He is the one who most often tips the balance, creating trouble for them. But he is also the one who most often solves problems for them again. At Ragnarok, however, he’s the one who will lead the Jotuns against the gods.
  • Darth Vader. Darth Vader is perhaps the most interesting character in Star Wars. He starts out as a prodigy for the Light Side, but falls to the dark side. As opposed to the Emperor, who is pure evil, he contains good. He is like a shadow of Loki: one of the good, gone to evil, upholding the rules where Loki creates Chaos - but in the end, he’ll be the defeat of Evil.
  • Persephone. Daughter of the grain Goddess Demeter, she is abducted by Hades to the underworld, and because she ate three pomegranate seeds, she must now stay in hades three months of the year. In these months, Demeter grieves, and nothing grows on Earth.
  • Bobbin Jack (Klods-Hans). The fool who wins the princess when his learned brothers can’t. The jolly son of nature.
  • Marjory the Trash Heap. The all-knowing, all-seeing oracle of the Fraggles, who can help them solve their troubles. But she’s more than that - she tries to get the Fraggles, Doozers and Gorgs to realize their interdependence and make a new balance. She’s Mother Earth and the Oracle at once.
  • Batman. In the night, the villains roam, spreading fear. But someone is spreading fear amongst the villains: the unknown, mysterious guardian of the night, the Dark Night. Batman. Batman and his enemies are mirror images, or shadows, of each other: Both Batman and the Joker are mad men, working outside the law. But the Joker spreads chaos, while Batman protects the order. Both the Scarecrow and Batman spread fear - Scarecrow amongst innocents, Batman amongst villains. And both Twoface and Batman have two identities - but Twoface’s make war against each other, while Batman’s work together.
  • King David. The Nature’s Son who killed Goliath, then turned into a power mad Despot, who got Urias killed to be with Betseba.

So, these are the characters. We’ll see what the students have made of them on Friday when they present their projects!

Words: Elias Helfer