A Rogue and Peasant Slave

“What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, that he should weep for her?” – Hamlet, Hamlet II.ii

If you take a virtual stroll through an online fandom to which you don’t belong, it can be mind-boggling how passionate some fans get about fictional characters. From the outside, it’s ridiculous that actual people — presumably with real lives and real things to worry about — can get so worked up about the love life of someone who doesn’t, didn’t, and never will exist that they fling vicious slurs at those who disagree with them or spend hundreds of hours writing novel-length stories about how their star-crossed OTP finally hooked up, got married, and had a Brady-Bunch-full of kids.

After all, why should you or I or anyone else care what happens to House or Harry Potter? Not only are they completely made-up — fake, non-existent, imaginary — but even if they weren’t, I wouldn’t know them. I don’t spend time with them or live with them or love them the way I do my friends and family. They don’t have feelings, unlike the living, breathing individuals who are sitting at their computers on the other side of the Internet. And they don’t really suffer, unlike the millions of other human beings on this planet whose real plight should matter to me far more than whether fictional doctors, wizards, and FBI agents end up happy with their equally fictional friends and True Loves.

This hierarchy of caring, reality over fiction, seems so obvious that we ridicule people who reverse it, like the guy who married a video-game character, or online commenters so worked up over whether Rachel belongs with Ross or Joey that they forget to treat their opponents like actual human beings. We giggle over other people’s slash fantasies and fiction, or cringe when someone forgets the “rules” and acts as though Edward and Bella are not only real people but their actual best friends.

And yet, I think we open our hearts more readily to fictional characters than real people. I know I do. I want my friends to be happy, but I don’t find their everyday tribulations or even their occasional monster troubles as engrossing as the drama of the stories I love. Although I think most of the real-life couples I know are extremely well suited for one another, and I’m glad they’re together, I don’t feel the same desperate chemistry for them as I do for the rom-com bickerers on my screen. And if you show me a movie about someone similar to the stranger on the street whom I walk past without thinking twice, you might even bring me to tears for them.

Cynically, one might argue that this is because it’s easier to feel for fictional characters. There are no commitments necessary, emotional or otherwise. When I get sick of House’s misery, I can turn him off, and no one will think I’m a bad person for never watching the show again. If I don’t like whom Harry Potter chooses as his girlfriend, I can shut the book or read fanfiction, consequence-free — I’m not going to run into him and Ginny at a party and have to face that I’m wrong. Likewise, I don’t have the same moral obligation to the characters in Slumdog Millionaire or Schindler’s List as I do to the real-life people who suffer or suffered their fates.

But this account puts the blame squarely on the shoulders of people who feel more strongly about fiction; it suggests that we can trace any such emotions to their personal failings, and I don’t think that’s fair. There’s surely some truth in the idea that those with psychological or moral flaws find fictional characters easier to sympathize with than real people, but it’s also important to remember that stories are designed to evoke strong feelings in us in a way real life is not.

Writers, performers, and directors choose what to show us in the hopes that they’ll draw us into empathy for people who don’t exist. We can weep for Hecuba but not, perhaps, for our own murdered fathers because Hecuba’s story has been abridged, edited, and revised to stir that reaction in us, while our own lives occur by chance and happenstance.

When a friend is upset in real life, what do I see? Maybe I catch him crying in the bathroom. Maybe she’s suddenly strangely cold or snappish toward me. Maybe all I ever get is a brief email telling me about what made him so angry, because we live halfway around the world from each other. But when a character is upset in a story I enjoy, I get to live through that emotional journey with her. Every relevant aspect of her feelings is presented to me in such a way that I’m encouraged to place myself in her shoes and allow the things that disturb her to disturb me, too. I experience the totality of a fictional character’s feelings in a way I never can and never will experience those of the people around me.

Fiction is life with the difficult parts abstracted away. Different genres abstract them to various degrees, but no genre exactly mimics reality. In stories, contradictory information is trimmed, and no extraneous moments are included. In contrast, life is confused and meandering, dwelling on boring and irrelevant details. In reality, someone who was sympathetic yesterday may show a completely different side of themselves tomorrow. In fiction, characters have immortal and immutable souls.

So I believe that falling in love with imaginary people and becoming engrossed in their trials and tribulations is okay. It’s not only what they’re designed for, but it’s how we work things through about our own lives. The problem is never in the emotions themselves; it’s in the actions that follow from those emotions. It’s fine to feel sadder for Harry Potter than for a friend who’s lost a loved one — putting Harry’s needs first and failing to be there for that friend is the part that’s troubling. Feeling strongly about fiction doesn’t mean failing to recognize that it’s just a game of pretend. As we grow, we learn to moderate our gut reactions with the moral and social code we’ve picked up from those around us. Though we enjoy the way fiction makes us feel, we can moderate that emotion with the knowledge of our real-life responsibilities and joys.

In other words, Hamlet isn’t a rogue and peasant slave because he dithers over his real, murdered father while the Player can bring himself to tears over the imaginary Hecuba. He’s a rogue and peasant slave because he can’t find it within himself to treat reality with the importance it deserves regardless.