What a character

Last night I caught this terrific essay on NPR, by Karen Grigsby Bates, about her complicated love of Scarlett O'Hara. (Bates is African-American; you can see where the complication comes in.) It's part of "In Character, "a new NPR series exploring indelible American characters from novels, movies, television and popular culture." What a great idea for a series! And there's a blog if you want to read more informal discussions of the topic, too.

How can a character on a page or screen--just black on white or flashes of colored lights--become so real to us that we cry, laugh, rage, wince, on their behalf? How can we feel, sometimes, that we even know them better, or know what's better for them, more than their creators? (I'll say it once and let it go: Hermione should have married Neville. Ron isn't good enough for her, never has been, never will be.) I've been taken for a while by the insight that while there is a bright line between real people and fictional people (I'm real, Harry Potter is not), there isn't by any means a bright line between real relationships and fictional relationships. Psychologists call relationships on the more fictional end of the spectrum "parasocial relationships," but there's always an awareness of a continuum.

My relationship with Mr. Improbable, for example, is about as real as a relationship gets. We both exist, we talk a lot and do things together, and we are physically in the same space for many hours a day. Yet even in that realest kind of relationship, a significant part of it occurs in our imaginations. I read a book and imagine what his response to it would be. I conjure up the image of his arms around me when he's traveling. He shops for groceries and asks himself what kind of special treat I might enjoy. As much as we interact with each other, we interact with our mental models of each other.

And the continuum goes further. My relationship with my father has been changing of late--to be expected, perhaps, except my father of blessed memory died over seven years ago. Is the relationship "real" or not, because one party is no longer on this earth? It sure feels real to me. Then there are relationships with people who exist, but who you've never met. If you had a strong inclination to watch or not watch the State of the Union address last night, chances are good you have the feeling of some sort of relationship with President Bush. Democratic and Republican candidates are scrambling now to see who can forge the strongest and most positive relationships with people they've never met.

I know many of my readers feel a certain relationship with me, and perhaps more surprisingly, I feel one with you! Not just with the handful of people who e-mail me frequently, or comment a lot on the chats, and whom I get to know a bit, but with all of you lurkers out there in cyberspace. You're out there, you're listening to me, and somehow I feel a deep sense of love and obligation and gratitude toward you. (Really, I do. I used to think writers/performers were just blowing wind up people's skirts when they said that, but it's true!)

So given how much even our relationships with real people can take place in the imagination, it's no leap to have a strong relationship with a fictional character. Some people are more inclined to this than others--and, counter to the geeky fanboy/girl Comic Book Guy stereotypes, it's the people who are overall highly social and relationship-oriented who are most likely to have strong parasocial relationships as well. I tend to be very prone to them, myself: I really was in tears, yesterday, of happiness that dogs I have never met are going to survive and be safe. Certain writers--Dorothy Parker, Anne Sexton--have always felt like sisters to me. When I read Torah, I have extremely vivid images of the Four Matriarchs--if I could draw, I could draw you exactly what they look like to me.

Probably the strongest parasocial relationship I've had in recent years was with the prostitute Trixie from HBO's "Deadwood." Torn between a fierce belief in herself and acid shame at her position in life, driven by terror and hope, Trixie blasted into my heart and is still there. She's as determined as Becky Sharp or Scarlett O'Hara, but unlike them, she didn't claw her way to security and respectability by stepping on others. Rather, she bettered herself and her community through wicked intelligence, crystal honesty, and a profound ability to love--all qualities that no one in her world even believed a whore capable of. She is one of the all-time great heroines.

Mr. Improbable and I were in Austria during the final episode of "Deadwood," and one of the penultimate cliffhangers was whether or not Trixie would survive a very, very bad mistake she'd made. The minute we got home, the very first thing, I fired up the HBO website to see if she'd lived. I couldn't stand not knowing for another second if my beloved and wholly-made-up Trixie was still "alive" or not!

I don't think this makes me crazy. (I wouldn't have told you about it if I did.) Not everyone responds to stories as passionately as I do, but we all have imaginary relationships--with imaginary people, or not.

And I'm let me say again how touched and honored I am that you've chosen to be in relationship with me.