They're here for our entertainment, yet they're so annoying. In every television show, there's at least one troubled soul that is constantly bringing in drama. These characters aren't always so well liked by the audience masses. Twitter is great for many things, one of those things being the perfect place to air out how much you hate these characters. Hashtags and threads of tweets are created in honor of shaming these characters and putting it out online that you hope they get written off. For many of these characters, they really don't deserve to be trash talked. From a literary stand point, they kind of have to be on the show. You need conflict. Granted, the conflict isn't always necessary in the grand scheme of things (meaning their plot points are dragged into the situation to get more viewers, attention on social media, and because the writers just get bored.) but the conflict still keeps the story moving, therefore making it necessary.
So do we take it out on the writer or the character? My best friend and I talk about this a lot with shows like "Shameless" and "Game of Thrones". These shows are chock full of troubled characters that make the show work but aggravate people. Sometimes you just know and accept that these characters are going to do something dumb and drama will ensue. Other times, the drama comes totally out of left field and hits you hard.
Spoilers for "Shameless," "Game of Thrones," "Gone with the Wind" and "Forrest Gump" ahead!!!!
In the beginning of Showtime's "Shameless", Debbie Gallagher was a sweet girl stuck in the middle of a tough home life. Her father is an alcoholic, her mother has manic bipolar disorder that often takes her away from the house, and she was raised by her older siblings who don't quite have it together themselves. Debbie is still naive and has love for the father and the others in her family. This love brings them all together and almost makes them decent people.
It doesn't last long. As the show moves forward, all love that goes to her father Frank slowly dwindles until there's nothing but genetic love. Debbie grows up slowly and her naivety fades as she learns more about the real world, faster than your average kid because... well, she is a Gallagher. After trials and errors with love, she finds herself pregnant (and by that I mean, she purposefully gets pregnant and it doesn't go as well as she hopes it will.) Being a young mother is as terrifying as it is in real life, only Debbie's world is a total mess. She had hardly any support from her family and the only real advice she's getting is from Frank, who is no help whatsoever. This is when we see our beloved Debbie go from the sweet, childish girl to full blown nightmare/hot mess on wheels.
Shock value isn't always a bad thing. It adds to the story, for sure. What I've noticed a lot more lately is that shock value is abused. This realization came to me when I was watching Game of Thrones, of course. Game of Thrones is all shock value, I know. I expect the shock value as someone who's read the books and knows that there's no way HBO is going to present a show where nudity, death, and graphic horror won't be showcased.
Nothing really shocked me for a while on the show, all the grand elements of HBO signature shows were like nothing to me after a while. I was only shocked when Sansa was forced to marry Ramsay Snow. If you know anything about this storyline, you know exactly what scene I'm talking about. This shock had all Game of Thrones viewers tweeting and sharing Facebook articles for days. Multiple think pieces and brunch conversations were had over the particular scene. Most would say it wasn't necessary, other might say it was. In the end, it really wasn't. It could've been left out. And to quote Forrest Gump, that's really all I have to say about that... but I have more on Forrest Gump, that comes later.
Just when you think, "Hasn't Sansa been through enough?" the writers cackle and rub their hands together to cook up something even worse for her. Her skin goes "from porcelain to ivory to steel" yet apparently she just needs to be bulletproof from writers and watchers.
Her dad is beheaded in front of her, she's forced to marry Tyrion, she's accused of killing Joffrey, her mom and older brother are killed at a wedding, Littlefinger exists, her aunt is a total psycho, her mom's ex-bf has a thing for her and suckers her into marrying a total monster, and just when you think things are looking up for her, her half brother comes back all whiny because his girlfriend died and most likely the fact he's been wearing that IKEA rug for 7 seasons. If you were in Sansa's boots (it is Winterfell, duh) you'd be miserable too. But alas no, people just love picking on the teenage girl with a lot on her plate. Crazy how that stuff translates from real life to fiction.
Sansa and Debbie are similar characters when you think about it, which of course I have. Not just because they both have red hair and they're little sisters who seem to have the worst hands dealt to them. They start off as the weakest characters and slowly mature into the strongest characters through the horrors and terrors they endure. That's the thing, they endure these horrors and terrors in the show. They overcome or fight through whatever shock value comes their way.
And what do viewers do in response, they hate them. They say they're annoying and complain the entire time they're on screen. These characters are the real heroes of the show, not in the big picture but in their own right. They might not keep the household and take care of the kids while trying to thrive as their own person or be the Mother of Dragons, but they are doing more work than anyone else on the show. It's just all internal. However, just when you think the writers are going to give them a break of their big time to shine, they throw them under the bus like they want the viewers to really hate the characters they're creating. It's easy to dislike these characters because without really thinking about them, they're just annoying.
There are countless shows with these kinds of characters and I could go on and on about them too but I want to get down to the OG Troubled Souls of Entertainment. I'm talking about Scarlett O'Hara from Gone With the Wind and Jenny from Forrest Gump. Scarlett is the protagonist of both the book and movie Gone with the Wind but due to the way she was written, many see her as annoying and too dramatic. Does she have every right to be annoying and dramatic? Sometimes yes.
Jenny from Forrest Gump can be seen as the antagonist for multiple reasons. Jenny's been dealt a bad hand too-- her character is mostly to show all of the bad things that happened in the years of Forrest's lifetime while Forrest seemingly sees most of the good. Jenny's also a child of abuse and had no help either. Scarlett O'Hara was a southern belle during the Civil War and that right there's enough damage. To add on the whole love triangle and other perils is just tiring. Much like the Troubled Souls that come after them, Scarlett and Jenny's drama is just as necessary as Debbie and Sansa's.
The truth about these characters is that they're just like us. Not like "Ooh! Celebrities, they're just like us!" But in ways of being relatable. We all go through bad times, we all mess up, we all have troubled moments and bring in drama that sometimes is insufferable. Sometimes, everyone around us hates us and we don't have a friend in sight. It really sucks when that happens, right? So why can't we cut the fictional people we're watching onscreen a break?
These characters deserve better treatment from us. They're doing the best they can with what's provided to them by the writers. So instead of taking it out on fictional people and the actors, take it out on the writers! Just bombard them with hate and if the hate is just, maybe they'll go into hiding on social media a la Joss Whedon after Avengers: Age of Ultron. Don't actually do that.
Just... think a bit about what you're watching and decide if you can handle tough situational shows with dramatic (most likely whiney and or masochistic male) writers. If you can, I highly suggest you use whatever humanity you have inside yourself to find the will to think "maybe I'm annoying and I'm just over-projecting on this fictional teenage girl... maybe I should get out of my mom's basement or call me ex and tell her I'm sorry." My friend and I will thank you, so will literally everyone else on Facebook.
