We’re having a roundtable about Mary Sues, with Noah leading the way here. I never heard the term before, but I think I can add an example: Michael Corleone. When the writer seems to gloat over how wonderful a character is, you’ve got a Mary Sue, and the Godfather novel does a lot of gloating about Michael; the movies, though more classy and understated, also adore him. Book and movies remind us over and over that Corleone is cool, controlled, lucid, unflappable, and (when it comes to business) infallible. I was writing here about the character:
… he is a born leader, a paragon of competence and nerve, a decorated war hero and cool-headed tactician. He is the dream self-image of Mario Puzo, that poor shambling yutz who wanted to pretend he was hard, compact and capable.
I think Michael Corleone works as a Mary Sue for a whole lot of people, for myself and a ton of other men born a little before, during, and a long time after World War II. Maybe the younger fellows have lost interest in him; I don’t know. But we’ve got decades’ worth of American males who dote on the Godfather films and the special punctilio of its characters, and especially on Michael Corleone, the paragon and epitome of the Godfather style.
Notice that Michael Corleone doesn’t quite fit either Mary Sue category described by Mandy in a comment to one of the posts here. Unfortunately I can’t find the post/comment, but if I remember right Mandy says there are two types: the winsome, wonderful Mary Sue who’s adored by his/her fellow cast members, and the brilliantly resourceful Mary Sue with his/her endless bag of gadgets and skills.
Batman and James Bond were examples that came up for the second group. Michael Corleone belongs with them because of his competence, but at the same time he marks a difference. Batman and James Bond know how to do all sorts of things, and they carry all sorts of gadgets, and that’s supposed to be what a second-category Mary Sue is all about. Michael Corleone doesn’t master birdcalls or fingerprint analysis or carry around a laser suitcase. He’s always on top of it, but he doesn’t really do anything. Starting out, he kills Sollozzo and McCluskey; the act condemns him to a criminal career and proves his competence at the basics of the family business. But after that Corleone is strictly management.
The winsome Mary Sue is all about others’ reactions: the whole reason she exists is to be found charming, courageous, sexy or whatever by the rest of the cast. To borrow a phrase from sociology, she’s outer-directed. The second kind of Mary Sue, the endless-skills variety, is more inner-directed. A second-cat Mary Sue has to know judo and safecracking whether or not people admire him for it. (In practice, of course, people do admire a second-cat MS, but that’s icing as opposed to cake.)
Michael Corleone is something different, an outer-directed second-category Mary Sue. Operationally, he does nothing but plot strategy and interact with his colleagues, and according to the series he does these things in glorious fashion. But follow along closely and the strategizing starts to look a bit thin. How does he know Tessio sold him out? Because Tessio is smart and selling out the family is the smart move. But if Tessio is so smart, doesn’t he realize that being smart will automatically make him Michael’s prime suspect? Well, no, he’s not that smart. Michael is a master strategist in a world where the author makes sure everyone else spots him 10 points. Michael’s great master strokes are presented as triumphs of brainpower, but all he does is send people to kill his enemies. The brilliance involved here is not too advanced: “I know, dress our guy as a cop! And for Roth, have the guy carry a newspaper under his arm! Nobody will suspect!”
That leaves interacting, which technically would mean how he deals with other people. But in practice the focus is just as much how he comes across to other people, and also to us. Michael Corleone’s competence is so ideal that it transcends specific abilities and becomes a matter of temperament, and his temperament is right in front of us, on display. He sits there, keeps his poker face, coolly meets our gaze, and you know he’s a competent kind of guy, a “man of respect.” But what if nobody respects him? Like the winsome Mary Sue, he’s a failure unless enough other characters give him the proper reaction. But, boy, they sure do, and for the ones that don’t there’s a hard lesson headed their way.
Action isn’t Michael Corleone’s thing; he behaves, and the behavior itself has got a twist to it. He’s a forceful, dominant personality, but he keeps quiet, sits still and doesn’t throw his weight about. He just takes what’s being given and turns it back, his face unblinking, and in the end he decides all. Senator Pat Geary sneers at him and tries to shake him down, and an hour of screentime later we see Geary broken, a bloody dead girl next to him in bed, and he’s nodding as Tom Hagen tells him the way things are going to be. Michael never raised his voice, never lifted a hand. But he’s deadly, you can tell by looking at him, and his deadliness takes practical form in his command of a deadly organization. His fitness to head that organization is signaled by the cool (no, “steely”) self-command he shows as he faces his enemies and underlings.
Which is convenient for us (for me and my fellow Godfather fans as I imagine them). If we had to be like Sonny Corleone, big James Caan stomping about and shouting, the mismatch would become a bit too much. Michael Corleone does what we do, which is to sit still and watch our mouths, and he turns it into strength, not weakness. The time comes for him to flex that strength, put it into effect, and, well, other people do that for him. Meanwhile, Michael keeps sitting around and coolly measuring out his thoughts and being careful about what shows on his face, and we’re happy. The deal hangs together even if a certain amount of stupidity is woven in. We buy the gimme that Michael is a tough guy who never does anything tough, and the one that has him beating opponents at checkers-level strategy contests. He helps us get by the way we are, which is a powerful incentive to buy a fantasy. And the disincentive, the implausibility, has to do with work, and work is a vague thing to us.
Nowadays most of us work in offices doing jobs that are fairly pointless when considered by themselves. Even if the details can be explained to a nonpracticioner, there’s not much reason to do the jobs themselves, not on their own. They make sense only as component actions of a vast process, one that’s undertaken by no one in particular and benefits nobody we know. We don’t expect to understand other people’s jobs, and we don’t expect them to understand ours. If they did understand, we wouldn’t expect them to be interested. Everyone has his compartment, and what we share outside the compartments is just us, making small talk. Michael Corleone works just fine for us, a dream version of ourselves that is 90% demeanor and 10% a vestigial work element.
The same slippery ground of unrealness travels from beneath our feet to the world of the Corleone family and its operations. It’s all “them” territory, as in “They”ll take care of it.” In our work lives we’re “them,” in the Godfather series the “they” work falls to buttonmen and we’re off with Michael Corleone, lounging quietly in our chair, in command. As the Godfather series goes on, the actual work of the Corleone family becomes hazy. The killing of Luca Brasi early in I is a big deal because he is an exceptionally good assassin; lose him and the family is crippled. By the time the movie is over, Michael can engineer a string of simultaneous deaths, a miracle round of killings, and we’re barely aware of who does what. Apparently the talent grows on trees. In fact when II ends Michael throws away one of his top assassins to get at Hyman Roth, an enemy who is on the ropes and trying to flee the country. The loss of the assassin is not a huge deal: a setback, possibly, but the family continues right along.
You can’t be proud of a fantasy like that. A bit of narcissism can work wonders in fiction, but a little too much is way too much. People get cloyed and disgusted, or else they see thru the whole deal at once and recognize how the same old dumb desires are being catered to. The selfishness and tunnel vision built into the deal are pretty awful when you stop to think: the killing of that girl so that Senator Geary can be blackmailed doesn’t even rise to a Barbara Gordon moment; the characters and movie wad her up like Kleenex. And if the Godfather series was just about a brilliant, cool-nerved Mafia leader who always gets his way, it would wear out its welcome pretty quickly. But Michael suffers. Though he’s a Mary Sue step by step, day by day, his big story is all about how he screws up, how he throws away his life. He winds up nowhere, sitting by himself and feeling bad, much like some of us on particular Sunday afternoons but in a far grander edition. He’s not moping, he’s bleak; he’s looking at the devastation he’s wrought, not job interviews he bungled. He has carved his way thru the world, made giant choices (an empire over love, vengeance over family), and now he takes the measure of the soul his actions have given him. It’s really not the same as me on a Sunday afternoon; but it looks the same, and the feelings have a lot in common, and if Michael is suffering I know there’s some kind of seriousness to outbalance and neutralize the vanity of his story’s appeal. His mistake was to love his father too much and to fight too hard in the world, and these are nothing like the mistakes I’ve made, or most people make, but his story still becomes a tragedy, and told well enough the whole dream becomes beautiful.
Holy crap that’s a great essay.
Absolutely.
Yes, lovely essay – but it’s not about a Mary Sue, it’s about the the character of Michael Corleone in the Godfather Trilogy. How about agreeing on one definition of the concept you’re discussing at the start (the one the rest of the world uses too, preferably)?
It seems like the rest of the world uses a few different definitions, and so far I don’t see how one is more valid than the others.
To further elaborate…. (spoilers!)
If Michael Corleone were a genuine Marty Stu, he would’ve never had to make ‘giant choices’ – he would have it all, love *and* empire, vengeance *and* family. This Mikey C. would return in the nick of time to prevent Kay from going through with the abortion! So she knows finally, indubitably that she’ll always be more important! So she doesn’t divorce him! And then (this guy is on a never-ending winning streak after all): his enemies, each and everyone of them, acquiesce to his demands – he gets to be the capo di tuti capi without a single drop of blood shed, all the mob working underneath as a highly-motivated (whatta boss we got!), well-oiled machine! They take over the city (easily), take on the Chicago outfit (we’re branching out boys), then stop those lousy Commies from taking over Cuba – more out of patriotism than greed, since by then, they already own more money than God, of which we are frequently reminded. The final shot is Michael and Kay chilling on a Havana beach with JFK and Marilyn, lighting up fat cigars presented to them by a humbled Fidel, the ghost of Don Vito proudly smiling down from high up in the clouds. And then we still have two more movies to go.
Okay, I might have gone overboard there a little bit, but do you get it? If you start putting highly competent characters like M.C. or Batman or James Bond in the same category as these twisted products of egomania unbound, these characters with skill-sets so broad and deep that they make virtually every other character redundant for any role other than slavish adoration, these Mary and Marty Sues, then you’re just diluting the word past any useful meaning and you might as well discuss the things you really want to discuss without resorting to false labeling.
“you’re just diluting the word past any useful meaning and you might as well discuss the things you really want to discuss without resorting to false labeling.”
That’s funny about the happy-face Godfather, but I insist that I dilute nothing. As I said, it seems like there isn’t any hard-and-fast, agreed-upon definition of Mary Sue. People lob out their notions and use the term as they find convenient.
For instance, your first paragraph is based on the idea that a Mary Sue is a character for whom absolutely everything works out. But in your next paragraph you refer to Mary Sues as having “skill sets that are so broad and deep that they make virtually every other character redundant.” That’s two definitions in one comment.
Mandy, an occasional commenter here, said that one category of Mary Sue is the sort of character who has an endless array of skills, and she gave Batman as an example. You object to that idea, but you do so in the very same paragraph where you refer to Mary Sues as having “skills sets that are so,” etc. You try to create a difference by referring to Batman and James Bond as “highly competent.” But that’s not going to do it. The guy behind the counter at the Cafe Depot right now is highly competent. Batman and James Bond are something else. They are characters with impossibly broad and deep skill sets.
The more I hear of the Mary Sue debate, the more I favor pluralism. Everyone’s an expert and no one has credentials. Whoever Mandy is, she’s known about Mary Sues for longer than I have. Now it turns out that a commenter named Tijmen thinks Mandy is all wet. But this Tijmen person also seems to have some doubts about Tijmen. Meanwhile I’m supposed to be working on shit that I’m not working on.
If James Bond isn’t a Mary Sue, then nobody is.
Tijmen, you’re basically arguing that Mary Sue has to remain a detrimental term for it to be meaningful. It’s most useful, in your view, as a bludgeon.
I disagree. I think it’s more useful and interesting to see Mary Sueism as a natural tendency in writing. Why do people (readers and writers) like these characters? What’s the investment there? How do they work in different ways?
A roundtable such as the one you’re advocating for would have us all basically just sitting around and mocking writers we don’t like for their alleged sins against God and canon. There is plenty of that sort of thing on the internet, certainly. I think this approach is more interesting — and that it tells us a lot more about writers, and readers, and Michael Corleone, and yes, more about Mary Sues as well.
And as for false labeling; the Hooded Utilitarian makes no guarantees as to the quality or safety of its products. Entries may contain monosodium glutamate or lark’s vomit. Read at your own risk.
Wrong.
A main character can be charismatic and SHOULD be holding the attention of the narrative. This is a ridiculous overreach and i live to stamp it out wherever I see it.
Second point to the comments: the term is “Mary Sue.” Not “Marty Stu.” Don’t be homophobic.
“A main character can be charismatic and SHOULD be holding the attention of the narrative.”
Well, duh. Wave hello with your straw man.
I’ve seen “Marty Stu” used on more than one occasion. It’s certainly gendered, but I don’t see why it’s homophobic? It just acknowledges that it’s not a female archetype, but can be male as well.
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Tijmen says:
Yes, lovely essay – but it’s not about a Mary Sue, it’s about the the character of Michael Corleone in the Godfather Trilogy. How about agreeing on one definition of the concept you’re discussing at the start (the one the rest of the world uses too, preferably)?
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Tom Crippen says:
It seems like the rest of the world uses a few different definitions, and so far I don’t see how one is more valid than the others.
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“This is a job for…Dictionary Man!”
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A Mary Sue (sometimes just Sue), in literary criticism and particularly in fanfiction, is a fictional character with overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as a wish-fulfillment fantasy for the author or reader. It is generally accepted as a character whose positive aspects overwhelm their other traits until they become one-dimensional.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue
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A female fanfiction character who is so perfect as to be annoying. The male equivalent is the Marty-Stu. Often abbreviated to “Sue”. A Mary Sue character is usually written by a beginning author. Often, the Mary Sue is a self-insert with a few “improvements” (ex. better body, more popular, etc). The Mary Sue character is almost always beautiful, smart, etc… In short, she is the “perfect” girl. The Mary Sue usually falls in love with the author’s favorite character(s) and winds up upstaging all of the other characters in the book/series/universe.
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http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=mary%20sue
Well, obviously Michael Corleone (at least in the movies, which are universally considered far better than the potboiler novel which spawned them) has gigantic flaws. (He had his brother murdered! His paranoia, life of crime, and secretiveness has cut him off from meaningful human contact, destroyed the love of his wife.)
He has no “overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms,” unless you count a preference for lurking in poorly-lit rooms. (Gordon Willis, what have you wrought?)
“A character whose positive aspects overwhelm their other traits until they become one-dimensional,” or the “perfect” guy? Hardly.
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Tijmen says:
[to Tom Crippen] …you’re just diluting the word past any useful meaning and you might as well discuss the things you really want to discuss without resorting to false labeling.
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In all fairness, though indeed he’s “diluting the word past any useful meaning,” I can see why Tom Crippen would stretch the definition like Silly Putty.
Unlike the more accurate but duller “The Name of the Character Many Enjoy Identifying With Is Michael Corleone,” the usage of “Mary Sue” is more punchy, trendy. Has an eye-catching pop to it. Like saying “__________ is the greatest/worst __________ of all time,” however inaccurate it might be, stands out in a way that, alas, nuanced assessments fail to.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Tijmen, you’re basically arguing that Mary Sue has to remain a detrimental term for it to be meaningful. It’s most useful, in your view, as a bludgeon.
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Well, looking at those pesky ol’ definitions, clearly Mary Sue is a detrimental term, like “junk food.” Which is not to say that, like cotton candy or corn dogs, it does not have its pleasures.
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I think it’s more useful and interesting to see Mary Sueism as a natural tendency in writing.
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A natural tendency in writing? Yeah, which is why the history of novels, and bookstore and library shelves are groaning under the weight of tomes featuring “fictional character[s] with overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as a wish-fulfillment fantasy for the author or reader…whose positive aspects overwhelm their other traits until they become one-dimensional.”
Why, look at Melville:
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Call me Ishmael. Some years ago — never mind how long precisely — having the usual load of gold coins in my purse, and looking for fresh interests and adventures, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of seeking further delights in a life chockablock with them: my many splendid mansions around the world, designed and custom-built to my specifications; the beauteous women who cannot resist my brawny yet graceful, broad-shouldered physique and ruggedly-handsome countenance, with high cheekbones, full, sensuous lips, eyes the icy blue of a Nordic lake, topped with a mane of lustrous golden hair; the admiration and acclaim from all ranks of society which follow wherever I go.
Whenever I find myself eager for fresh experiences and knowledge to add those I currently possess — champion horseman, expert swordfighter, poet emeritus, best-selling novelist, world-renowned Flamenco dancer, painter whose canvases are enshrined in palaces, master surgeon — I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can….
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Bringing comics into this, Ozymandias in “Watchmen” is an absurd gathering of glowing characteristics; yet he’s also a mass murderer who’s damned himself, in an attempt to prevent greater bloodshed that might end up rendered null and void by a pimply dimwit. Should we call Ozzy a “Mary Sue” too?
Sheesh. Dictionaries are even less useful than usual with recent terms that are evolving.
It might be interesting to think about Ozymandias as a Mary Sue. It seems like a bit of a stretch since he’s pretty clearly not supposed to be sympathized with…but if you wrote an interesting essay about why he was, you’d have an interesting essay about why he was.
But I guess folks got to quibble on the internet….
And, you know, Tom wrote a whole essay about how his flaws are part of his appeal, and why he is in fact idealized. In response you quote the dictionary and say, “no he isn’t!” Which again is fine, but isn’t quite the knockout blow you seem to think it is.
Mike, I’ll add that I didn’t write about Mary Sue out of trendiness. My reason is right here: “We’re having a roundtable about Mary Sues, with Noah leading the way here.” I tucked the thought away at the very start of the post.
I immediately followed up with this: “When the writer seems to gloat over how wonderful a character is, you’ve got a Mary Sue …” Seemed like a good point to me, still does. In political science it’s understood that a country can be a democracy or autocracy without being absolutely a democracy or autocracy. I don’t see any harm to applying this approach to fan fiction terms. After hearing the response from people who know more about Mary Sues than I do, I’d stick in something saying that Michael is not an absolute and perfect Mary Sue but that he is enough like one to perform the service that a Mary Sue is supposed to perform. As it is, I like this stab at the underlying principle of Mary Sueism: “When the writer seems to gloat over how wonderful a character is, you’ve got a Mary Sue.”
Finally, your point would have been great if Noah had said Marysuism is a natural tendency in writing and is therefore found in all works of fiction and especially in their opening paragraphs. But he didn’t.
For the last pgraph: I mean Mike’s point about Melville.
Mary Sue’s in published fiction would definitely include Natty Bumpo, James Bond, Tarzan, Lord Peter Whimsey (sp?), Sherlock Holmes…quite possibly the Old Man in the Old Man and the Sea, and probably other Hemingway characters. There’s no shortage of them, really.
I don’t think Ishmael quite qualifies…the book’s not really about him, and he’s not exactly a paragon of virtue or talent. Maybe the whale could be a Mary Sue? I kind of like that idea.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Mary Sue’s in published fiction would definitely include Natty Bumpo, James Bond, Tarzan, Lord Peter [Wimsey], Sherlock Holmes…quite possibly the Old Man in the Old Man and the Sea, and probably other Hemingway characters. There’s no shortage of them, really…
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No, you’re confusing the routinely idealized, “smarter than the average bear” hero-figures with Mary Sues.
Also note that (save for the even greater than usual absurdity of including Hemingway’s Old Man) each of your examples is a hero from genre fiction (thus not intended to aspire to the degree of complexity of “literary” characters), crafted to appear in a series of adventures.
And, is every super-able figure from history, folklore and myth — Samson, Hercules, the Hero Twins of the Popol Vuh, Br’er Rabbit, King Arthur, Jesus — to now be “Mary Sue’d”?
Well, if anyone who criticized the Vietnam and Iraq wars can be called a “traitor” (why bother with those pesky dictionary definitions?), why not let words mean whatever you want them to mean?
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Tom Crippen says:
…your point would have been great if Noah had said Marysuism is a natural tendency in writing and is therefore found in all works of fiction and especially in their opening paragraphs. But he didn’t.
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Ah, the familiar “say that somebody made an absurd, exaggerated argument they didn’t actually make, then jab them for being absurdly exaggerated” bit.
My point was, that if “Mary Sueism [w]as a natural tendency in writing,” therefore it would be a widely prevalent phenomenon. As written earlier,
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A natural tendency in writing? Yeah, which is why the history of novels, and bookstore and library shelves are groaning under the weight of tomes featuring “fictional character[s] with overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as a wish-fulfillment fantasy for the author or reader…whose positive aspects overwhelm their other traits until they become one-dimensional.”
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Does this say, ” is therefore found in all works of fiction and especially in their opening paragraphs“? Nope. It’s just an indications that, even despite the modifying efforts of editors and publishers of taste, there would still be tons of May Sue stuff that would have gotten out there. But, God forbid someone should be able to read anything in something other than the most superficial, cursory fashion.
Again, with the ways in which Mary Sues differ from regular heroic figures highlighted:
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A Mary Sue (sometimes just Sue), in literary criticism and particularly in fanfiction, is a fictional character with overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as a wish-fulfillment fantasy for the author or reader. It is generally accepted as a character whose positive aspects overwhelm their other traits until they become one-dimensional.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue
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A female fanfiction character who is so perfect as to be annoying. The male equivalent is the Marty-Stu. Often abbreviated to “Sue”. A Mary Sue character is usually written by a beginning author. Often, the Mary Sue is a self-insert with a few “improvements” (ex. better body, more popular, etc). The Mary Sue character is almost always beautiful, smart, etc… In short, she is the “perfect” girl. The Mary Sue usually falls in love with the author’s favorite character(s) and winds up upstaging all of the other characters in the book/series/universe.
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http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=mary%20sue
I think it’s especially prevalent in genre fiction. But folks like Tarzan are more than smarter than the average. I mean, have you read those books? He’s better than everyone at everything always. It’s preposterous. Same with Bond or Natty Bumpo or Peter Whimsey. They’re all idealized and irritating, every one. And so, Tom says, is Michael Corleone. And he makes a good case for it.
Your definition of a Mary Sue as an implausibly potent and charismatic hero encompasses virtually every hero of escapist adventure fiction. Tarzan, James Bond, and Sherlock Holmes, and you’re working through the big ones there, don’t make sense as Mary Sues because they have traits which compel interest and their adventures require them to overcome credible and memorable opposition.
The term “Mary Sue” came from a satire of Star Trek fan fiction which featured a new character appearing on the Enterprise and being showered with adoration by the cast. The humor concerned the failure of a transparent exercise in self-gratification to work as a Star Trek adventure.
Whether or not Michael Corleone faces significant and credible opposition, and I would say he does, he is a tragic character who begins as an idealist and ends as the institutional evil he sought to escape. Any victory he has is ironic and represents a more profound defeat. A Mary Sue would have reformed the Mafia and received the key to the city.
Mary Sues can make it out of fan fiction, but they tend not to go far. Jim Shooter’s creations The Beyonder and Star Brand have been described as Mary Sues. James Gould Cozzens’ By Love Possessed, a novel only remembered today for a brutal review by Dwight MacDonald, certainly sounds as if it featured a Mary Sue with a character given to lengthy, banal, moralizing speeches. Julie Taymor was derided for basing her Spider-Man Broadway musical around a “spider goddess” character, widely perceived as being a representation of herself, which the other producers sharply reduced once they wrested control of the show from her. Chip Kidd’s recent Batman graphic novel features a designer villain based on himself, who is the antagonist but is also brilliant, charming, and befriends Batman in the end.
You can always try to redefine a word and persuade the world to follow along, but the intention of the Mary Sue satire was not to lampoon an implausibly powerful and attractive hero. My sense of the term is that it describes a phenomenon in which an obvious representation of the author is granted an importance in the story that is out of proportion to any deserving features apparent to the audience. Was James Bond an ideal version of Ian Fleming? I don’t know, but the re’s never a moment we wonder why we’re reading about him. I would suggest that while an author’s creating an ideal version of himself/herself could be a route to success, the Mary Sue falls short of a level of development which would justify his/her presence and accomplishments in the story, and this becomes a glaring problem in the context of a pre-established set of characters . This is an understandable pitfall for a self-representation because we all find ourselves especially interesting, and some lost souls will confuse the satisfaction of delivering surely long-overdue rewards to that surrogate with the emotional payoff of a story.
Yeah, I like Elise’s definition better. Maybe the cutoff line should be somewhere between Holden Caufield and Seymore Glass? J.D. Salinger obviously loves and identifies with both of his sensitive, outsider creations. But most of the other characters seem to find Holden annoying, whereas Seymore’s siblings worship him to a degree that seems kind of implausible.
“but there’s never a moment we wonder why we’re reading about him.”
Speak for yourself. The James Bond books are really utter crap. So is Tarzan. So is that first Peter Whimsy book. The protagonist’s centrality and wonderfulness is unendurable in all of those, at least for me.
It’s unclear what “credible opposition” means in genre fiction when you know the hero is going to win.
I understand that Mary Sue was intended as a term of utter opprobrium, meant specifically to lampoon fan-fiction characters. I really don’t believe, however, that fan fiction in general is especially worse than plain old fiction. Moreover, the Mary Sue impulse — to create a character the author would like to be — is widely prevalent in genre fiction, and I believe in other kinds of fiction as well. I think it’s worth recognizing that, rather than using the term solely to sneer at a restricted group of people whose main sin is that they did something other people do all the time, but failed to get a publisher.
And sometimes the self-insert can be quite interesting in various ways — Marston’s trans desire to be Wonder Woman, for example.
And the pendulum swings back again…
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Noah Berlatsky says:
…The James Bond books are really utter crap. So is Tarzan. So is that first Peter Whimsy book. The protagonist’s centrality and wonderfulness is unendurable in all of those, at least for me.
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Nah; the Bond books are fine, pulpy adventure fare. I can’t speak up for ERB, don’t think I’ve ever read one of his books. But Dorothy L. Sayer’s Lord Peter Wimsey is a charmingly self-effacing gentleman sleuth, an admirable addition to the “cosy” mystery gang.
And, “The protagonist’s centrality… is unendurable”? Yes, the hero of the series of books should be a minor character, lost in the crowd.
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…I really don’t believe, however, that fan fiction in general is especially worse than plain old fiction.
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You must have read a huge amount of amazingly great fan fiction, with lousy stuff few and far between. Or be ideologically committed to supporting it over that nasty elitist stuff that actually earns critical acclaim.
(In all fairness, the one substantial batch of fan fiction I’ve read was pretty good! But then this was a book collection of the crème de la crème of “Star Trek” fan fiction. With nary a Mary Sue in sight; just good writing. Indeed, at least one of the fans therein went on to sell a script to an incarnation of the show.)
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Moreover, the Mary Sue impulse — to create a character the author would like to be — is widely prevalent in genre fiction, and I believe in other kinds of fiction as well.
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Yet, what a difference there is between a somewhat idealized author-surrogate, and a ridiculously overblown, crappily inflated one!
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…I think it’s worth recognizing that, rather than using the term solely to sneer at a restricted group of people…
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Those poor babies! Let’s add them to the ever-growing pool of victims oppressed by the white, hetero, patriarchal, “ableist” power structure…
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…whose main sin is that they did something other people do all the time, but failed to get a publisher.
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The outrage! Yes, people don’t mock the Mary Sue creators because of the dramatically mediocre, blatantly wish-fulfilling self-aggrandizement in their thinly-veiled self-portrayals.
Why, other authors put forth books and stories starring characters with overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms, whose positive aspects overwhelm their other traits until they become one-dimensional, who usually falls in love with the author’s favorite character(s) and winds up upstaging all of the other characters in the book/series/universe, “all the time.”
Nope, the only reason these fans get razzed is…because they “failed to get a publisher.” (What a sneering bunch of elitists!)
Noah, I had no intention of derogating fan fiction in any way. I even gave examples of published, high-profile works involving characters who were vulnerable to the charge of Mary Sue-dom.
I haven’t read the original Tarzan or James Bond novels for a long time so I couldn’t join a discussion of their merits, but I was talking about what distinguishes those characters from a self-indulgent exercise. The “traits which compel interest” that I had in mind are things like being raised in the jungle or being an expert spy and assassin. These primary-color traits are reasons for stories to be told about these characters, and for other characters to be interested in them.
“It’s unclear what “credible opposition” means in genre fiction when you know the hero is going to win.”
Come on. The audience is all but certain the hero will overcome all obstacles in the adventure genre, but still expects him to deal with credible, that is, convincingly formidable and interesting opposition.
“And sometimes the self-insert can be quite interesting in various ways — Marston’s trans desire to be Wonder Woman, for example.”
And Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, and Clowes’ Ghost World- definitely. But those are cases where authorial surrogates underwent a transformation. I’m suggesting a distinction in which the Mary Sue is an underdeveloped self-insertion.
See, I think the most interesting part of the definition is the self-insertion, really — the sense that there’s a character that the author loves too much (“too much” being definable in various ways.) What’s undeveloped and what isn’t seem like they can be endlessly debated…but for me the most interesting bit is the sense of a privileged relation between author and character, which may work or not.
Think of it this way. If you don’t use Mary Sue to define the privileged relation between James Bond and Ian Fleming, then there’s no term for that. And I think there really should be a term, because it tells you a lot about how those books work. And Mary Sue is available — and it fits.
“Come on. The audience is all but certain the hero will overcome all obstacles in the adventure genre, but still expects him to deal with credible, that is, convincingly formidable and interesting opposition.”
But that’s all really pretty vague (what’s convincing? what’s interesting?) and not even true a lot of the time. I mean, often in the adventure genre people are there mostly to see things blow up.
Oh, and Mike, everyone tells me the Whimsy books get better. In the first couple he’s revealed to be a brilliant cricket player and a champion bell ringer. I can’t believe I still remember that; I guess it was more scarring than I thought.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
…Think of it this way. If you don’t use Mary Sue to define the privileged relation between James Bond and Ian Fleming, then there’s no term for that.
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Hows’ about, “author” and “character”? Don’t think I ever came across any mention of the relation between a creator and their characters being “privileged,” much less a particular, specific term for that status; maybe ’cause it was all too obviously part of that situation.
Such as, do we need a term for the “privileged relation” between parents and their children? Isn’t it considered inherent in their very condition?
And, because such terms don’t exist, we should latch onto anything that might be available, even if it carries a set of particular qualities that won’t necessarily fit?
I’m certainly in favor of such a term being coined, sans the Mary Sue baggage.
How’s about, droit d’auteur (right of the author), or droit du créateur (right of the creator)? Which, like the term that inspired it, droit du seigneur, has the understanding that the author/creator may behave harshly, destructively towards their own characters.
Such as when Arthur Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes; countless authors putting their characters (who they will often note take on a kind of life, autonomy of their own) through tortures and traumas.
(For that matter, how about there being a term for the rights of characters to not be abused or made to do things against their principles or nature by their creators, or corporate copyright holders? They may have charms of their own, but these new Downey flicks sure come across in previews as an abomination [“Sacrilege!”, as the Missus put it], an insult to the great Sherlock Holmes.)
With no Mary Sueism being brought up at all, there was still much feeling that with “Before Watchmen” the rights as creators (if not legal rights) of Moore and Gibbons were being trampled.
AT “Video Art and Venus Girdle,” you mentioned:
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…A lot of my antipathy [towards the video] comes down to just being sick of Wonder Woman the character erasing the original comics.
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Understandably so; as with “Watchmen” and “Before Watchmen,” the remarkable qualities and uniqueness of the original work can be besmirched by inferior or distorted versions by other creators. Indeed, even “authorized, official” continuations of the adventures of certain characters by later creators as often as not (at the very least) are painful come-downs.
But, come to think of it; isn’t Mary Sueism, in the original sense of fanfiction, a massive violation of the droit du créateur of the original creators?
Having everyone on the Enterprise fall head-over-heels over some shallow ego-trip of a fanfiction surrogate character certainly makes nonsense of the intelligence, back history, gravitas of the original characters.
Never mind other fanfictions — Spock and Kirk being lovers, for instance — that would have the creators spinning in their graves, whatever their “real world” attitudes.
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…everyone tells me the Whimsy books get better. In the first couple he’s revealed to be a brilliant cricket player and a champion bell ringer. I can’t believe I still remember that; I guess it was more scarring than I thought.
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Glad you’re getting some positive feedback; yet…
It’s Wimsey! WIMSEY! WIMSEYYYYY!!!
As to the character being a Mary Sue, for all his wealth, impressive family history, and assorted talents and skills, Ms. Sayer’s amateur detective is hardly a “character whose positive aspects overwhelm their other traits until they become one-dimensional”:
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Wimsey is described as being at best average height, with straw-coloured hair, a beaked nose, and a vaguely foolish face.
As a boy, the young Peter Wimsey was, to the great distress of his father, strongly attached to an old, smelly poacher living at the edge of the family estate.
In 1918, Wimsey was severely wounded by artillery fire near Caudry in France. He suffered a breakdown due to shell shock (which we now call post-traumatic stress disorder) and was eventually sent home. After the war he was ill for many months, recovering at the family’s ancestral home…Wimsey was for a time unable to give servants any orders whatsoever, since his wartime experience made him associate the giving of an order with causing the death of the person to whom the order was given.
In Strong Poison Lord Peter encounters Harriet Vane, a cerebral, Oxford-educated mystery writer, while she is on trial for the murder of her former lover. He falls in love with her at first sight. Wimsey saves her from the gallows, but she believes that gratitude is not a good foundation for marriage, and politely but firmly declines his frequent proposals.
…in “Whose Body?” it is seen that when Wimsey is caught by a severe recurrence of his WWI shell-shock and nightmares, being taken care of by [his WWI fellow-soldier, now valet] Bunter, the two of them revert to being “Major Wimsey” and “Sergeant Bunter”. In that role, Bunter – sitting at the bedside of the sleeping Wimsey – is seen to mutter affectionately “Bloody little fool!”
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Peter_Wimsey
In short, not particularly good looking (even less-than-average), traumatized by war, his marriage proposals humiliatingly rejected again and again…
As for James Bond, not exactly up to Wimsey’s levels of flawed vulnerability, but:
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Fleming based his creation on a number of individuals he came across during his time in the Naval Intelligence Division during World War II, admitting that Bond “was a compound of all the secret agents and commando types I met during the war”. Amongst those types were his brother, Peter, who Fleming worshipped, and who had been involved in behind the lines operations in Norway and Greece during the war.
Aside from Fleming’s brother, a number of others also provided some aspects of Bond’s make up, including Conrad O’Brien-ffrench, a skiing spy whom Fleming had met in Kitzbühel in the 1930s, Patrick Dalzel-Job, who served with distinction in 30 AU during the war, and Bill “Biffy” Dunderdale, station head of MI6 in Paris, who wore cufflinks and handmade suits and was chauffeured around Paris in a Rolls-Royce…
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So rather than an idealized version of himself, Bond was a composite of others whom Fleming admired. Also…
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On another occasion Fleming said: “I wanted the simplest, dullest, plainest-sounding name I could find, ‘James Bond’ was much better than something more interesting, like ‘Peregrine Carruthers’.
[Which sure would have been Mary Sueish!]
“Exotic things would happen to and around him, but he would be a neutral figure—an anonymous, blunt instrument wielded by a government department.”
Whilst referring to Bond’s food and wine consumption as “gimmickery”, Fleming bemoaned that “it has become an unfortunate trade-mark. I myself abhor Wine-and-Foodmanship. My own favourite food is scrambled eggs.”
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bond_%28character%29
Mike, to go way back upthread, I didn’t ascribe any argument to you. I said your Melville quote didn’t answer Noah, a point I stand by. Though if I expressed it snottily, I’d certainly find some other way of doing so.
What I get out of the Mary Sue debate is that the people who care about the term feel that absoluteness is one of the chief things that make it useful. My guess is that if you read fanfic you run across absolute, 100% Mary Sues and that, for most people, this experience makes anything else on the Mary Sue continuum seem pale. After you’ve seen a few full-on Mary Sues, saying that a character is somewhat like a Mary Sue is like saying an animal is somewhat like a narwhal. Maybe it is, but who cares? The point of a narwhal is that it is absolutely a narwhal and nothing else.
Since I don’t read fanfic, what struck me as interesting about Mary Sue was that she represented in its most blatant form a tendency that snakes thru fiction. But I can and do call that tendency “gloating over a character by its author,” so I can follow Mike’s advice and avoid Marysuism as a term.