STEREOTYPES.

What has gone before: It was a dark and stormy night and Archetypal Images.

When I first started to think about the popularity of stereotypes in modern fiction, I tried on the conclusion it was to do with the ongoing stupidification of the world; the Orwellian Newspeak ideals that are robbing us of our desire to communicate in anything more than sketches and sound bites; the determination to write in the same Neanderthal grunts modern humans use to speak. But in discussion, a friend began to list one word descriptions of people – feminist, housewife, temptress, hippie – and I realized the formation of complete personality profiles from single words was much older and deeper than any self-destructive cultural phase.

We generally think in shorthand and probably always have. Back when the world related easily to the classics, whole moods, whole histories of characters, could be called up for the reader by terms like ‘melted wings’ or ‘Damocles’ sword’. For most readers, in fact, ‘Orwellian Newspeak’ is a redundancy. Using either reference alone, or ‘Doublethink’ or ‘Big Brother’, would have sufficed to illustrate the point. Our minds work perfectly to translate the entire arc of ‘1984’concepts into the argument. Once an idea has entered the popular canon, it draws the whole boxful of its associations into the shared consciousness. [How much information comes immediately to mind if I say ‘sparkly vampires’?]

We naturally think in boxes.

As soon as we meet with anybody, in reality or fiction, we run the scan over them and box them. We do the automatic comparisons to self, assign them a type, and work out our assumptions and judgments. Those assumptions can always be adjusted as we go, depending on how important that person is going to be, and how much more we learn about them. And when we do not have much time, page count speaking, we do not need to know much more about incidental characters than we can gather in an instant.

Yes, it is nice when we read a story so well devised that every face in the crowd is clear, and every personality luminous. But it is equally tiresome to find an author so in love with their world and their people that they drone on about someone on the sidelines when we just want to get back to the story and see where the main characters are planning to go. Stereotypes are probably used most often by most authors to fit out minor characters.

But most genres rely on stereotyped characters as part of their appeal. Yes, the best authors allow us to feel we are seeing the world through the eyes of a real and substantial person/people, but at a fundamental level, there are character set pieces we expect to see, and we recognize them on sight.

Classical fantasy absolutely demands a set of known characters. They may have quirks, but we need to see a mage, a youth, warriors with swords, thieves, publicans, maidens, witches and supreme evil. We want to travel with these characters on their quest, and we must watch them develop, grow, overcome, and learn through their travails.

Romance novels have had four characters in a thousand different guises since they began: the firebrand, the virgin, the rake, and the gallant. They must share the stage with the old aunt, the sidekick, the evil earl, and the love rat, but their hair color and their historical era only fleshes out the story of the love/conflict/love. That is why we read the book. We want to hear that story again. We want to see love prevail against all odds.

Without the gumshoe to lead us through the dark streets, past the hard faced harlots with hearts of gold and the smart/sweet victims of street-wise criminal sleaze-balls, there is no illusion of swift and brutal justice in the dangerous world of noir. We want to hear again how we can vicariously outwit and out grit the bad guys.

In the massively popular young adult market, especially in ensemble pieces set in schools, instantly recognizable characters are essential. We read these stories about the time in life when we MUST classify and associate and judge and belong and understand the members of specific stereotyped groups because there is a war out there for young adults. That is the time when we are defining ourselves. We must define others, too, and we understand each other best within a known social structure.

It goes on; pick a genre. And each of us choose our genre, with its featured characters all easy to recognize and understand, and we will enjoy the same basic few stories told and retold by the same basic few characters. Through them we see ourselves. Through them we experience the thoughts and actions of others. Through them we ask, ‘what if?’ and find answers. Through these stories, told along the same basic lines since the ancient myth cycles, we try to understand ourselves and others, and the way we all fit into the world we share.

Unfortunately stereotypes are too often used to ostracize or ridicule a group by collecting some known negatives and applying them to all people in that group. In fiction, stereotyping in any form, character or event, or clichéd phrasing and overused memes, is frowned upon. Beginning any story: “It was a dark and stormy night…” and collecting some cut out characters to move through a predictable landscape, should be avoided like the plague. :) But like every rule about what makes a story good or bad, the stereotype rule is best broken.
We need to hear our stories, all seven, or twenty-three, or ten thousand of them, told and retold by characters that represent ourselves and known others. We need those stories.