Advertising With Character -- Part I: The Origins of "Character"

Advertising With Character:  an exploration into the use and abuse of characters in marketing -- from Aunt Jemima, to Josephine the Plumber, to Joe the Plumber -- running December 10 through January 16.  

Note -- 12/24:  Though I originally expected to finish this series on Christmas Day, I have decided to extend this series with a number of new entries.  The extra work will take me through the beginning of the new year.  Bear with me -- I hope to make it worth the wait.

Today:  "The Origins of 'Character'"

 

Before we get started, let me set the stage.

Before I got into the marketing biz, I worked as a producer, director, and -- my favorite role -- dramaturg in the world of small professional theatre.  It was at this time in my life -- in the mid-90's, when Silicon Valley was beginning to reinvent itself around something new called the World Wide Web -- that I was spending most of my time thinking about old stuff.  I was in theatre, the most ancient of the communication arts, and it was as a dramaturg -- a researcher/interpreter of old plays -- that I got  a brief opportunity to learn something about the ancient craft of comedy, which I can confidently say -- after considering lots of contradictory evidence -- is the origin of "character," as we know it.

I got a gig as executive producer/dramaturg of the SF Revels, the Bay Area chapter of a national organization with a very simple mission:  to celebrate the Winter Solstice each year as it was celebrated historically in a different time and place.  The year I worked for SF Revels (1996), the time and place was London, in the Victorian Era (can't get more Christmassy than that -- at least that was my perspective, at the time).  Directed by David Parr (former artistic director of the famed Eureka Theater Company), the show was extraordinary, featuring lots of things you may have heard of, and several things you may not have heard about but would find familiar.  For example:  a Harlequinade, a Victorian era theatrical production which was a combination of contemporary music/dance and the already old tradition of commedia dell'arte comedy.  Commedia is the thing you may find familiar (think "situation comedy").  Inspired from the ancient Greek and Roman comedies (notice how we keep moving backward, then forward), commedia was an Italian Renaissance reinvention where the drama was not so much about the story as it was about the characters.   With little more than a handful of well-known archetypal characters that reflected both timeless and contemporary values -- e.g., the miserly father (Pantalone), his ingenue daughter (Columbina), and his comic servant (Arlecchino, or, in the English translation, Harlequin -- thus the Victorian name, the Harlequinade), Commedia theater troupes would roam the countryside acting out situations that brought out the most comedic aspects of the characters. 

By character, of course, I mean two things:  it is both (a) the invention of the storyteller in a theatrical performance ("the character, Harlequin, appears in this play") and (b) the moral fiber of the kind of person the character portrays ("oh, Harlequin -- he has such poor character.")  But what's really important to note here -- as the Harlequinade stood neatly poised before the ancient craft of character making an the industrial-era production of characters for mass entertainment -- is that the recurring character had already evolved as a storytelling device to meet the evolving needs of the storyteller:

--the most successful, memorable characters represent universal truths.  They are not just stereotypes (though many are).  The best ones are archetypes.

--as archetypes, they enable the storyteller to connect profoundly with the audience in ways that other characters cannot. Example:  the recurring character of Jack Falstaff, who appears -- always as himself --  in several of Shakespeare's plays.

--as archetypes, they enable the storyteller to extend the value of their work beyond a single unit of entertainment.  

This last point is the most poignant, if you consider what the world was like before the turn of the century.   The characters of the Victorian Harlequinade seem like sad, beautiful, nostalgia-inducing relics, like the Victorian street vendors who actually sold their goods in song -- and in character -- outside the theatre, and on the streets of London (see below -- a clip from the 1968 film, Oliver, recreating the real deal, Hollywood-style).   Sad not just because we can no longer really experience them, but sad because they are the forgotten ancestors in entertainment and commerce that would soon be replaced -- at an increasingly furious rate of production -- by filmmakers, TV producers, and yes, advertisers.    

NEXT:  HOLLYWOOD AND THE CHARACTER FACTORY