THE ANTI HERO

For years I’ve said that the five-element story model doesn’t have an Anti-Hero. I was wrong.

I said this because we define the Hero not as the story’s good-guy, but as the story’s Point of View.  If you tell “Silence of the Lambs” from Hannibal Lechter’s point of view Hannibal isn’t an “anti-hero”,  he is that story‘s Hero plain and simple, no matter how despicable his actions. This is exactly what the series Dexter is doing.

I should have gone a step further in my thinking. Stories are holistic. As well as being the story’s point of view a Hero confronts an obstacle, experiences awareness and undergoes a transformation. What happens if a story’s point of view is so completely oppositional that it actually is more antagonist than hero? In terms of political stories the anti-hero’s point of view would have no defined ideology (ground to stand on). It would simply be against anyone who does. 

A case in point is NYT columnist Maureen Dowd. Though I admit I haven’t been a regular reader for a while, and feel free to refresh my memory, I can’t recall a time she was actually for something. If you have power, or want it, whether you are Bill Clinton, George W. Bush or Hillary she always has something nasty to say about you. And that is pretty much as far as her thinking seems to go.  Like many guilty pleasures, it is all empty calories.

Ms.Dowd is an example of an Anti-Hero. And while a Hero provides a point of view that brings people together and eventually leads them to awareness, an Anti-Hero does just the opposite. There is no awareness, no transformation. The target of Ms. Dowd’s vitriol may chance, but her tone remains remarkable consistent.

With Dem unity now in a delicate state (and McCain leading Obama in Ohio polls) Obamaistas should be very careful about drinking too deeply from Ms. Dowd’s poison pen.