Dead Poets Society
Castler MediaLogliner
English teacher John Keating inspires his students to look at poetry with a different perspective of authentic knowledge and feeling.
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Well, how about about something like:
An unconventional English teacher defies the repressive rules and regime of a private academy to inspire his students to live passionately and think for themselves.
(25 words)
For me, the key word in this version — what distinguishes it substantively from?the logline that inspired this thread?– is?”defies”. ?Most of the time, the hero is someone who defies authority, ?the established rules, standard operating procedures. If not initially, then eventually to achieve his objective goal.
In “Dead Poets Society” the teacher is acting in opposition to the established order, the status quo. ?Opposition ?creates jeopardy, risk. ?Jeopardy and risk creates ?tension, the dynamic essence of drama. ?In defying the institution where he teaches, Keating is putting his job at risk. ?He has skin in the game.
Where is the risk factor in the other logline? ?Who/what is the professor defying by getting his students to look at string theory differently? What is at risk, what danger is he putting himself in (and his students)? ?What skin does the physics professor have in his “game”? ?
Where is the dramatic tension in teaching string theory?
And what are the stakes? ?In “Dead Poets Society”, Keating’s job is not only at stake, but, more importantly, so are the lives, the souls of his students. He’s challenging them to live their lives with exuberance instead of dispassionate conformity, to commit high parental treason by daring to think for themselves.
Some might argue that “living exuberantly” and “thinking for themselves” are too general, lack concrete specificity to be worthy dramatic goals. ?But in the logline the vague actions are not operating in a vacuum– they take place in relationship, in opposition to a concrete, repressive academic regime. ?It’s up to each of the students to work out their specific form of an exuberant and free thinking life– and how they struggle to do so constitutes other story threads of the movie.
fwiw
Agree with DPG, the change of subject matter (poetry v string theory) also changes the stakes as a result of their implications with in this specific strict education institution.
However, in my mind, Dead Poets Society was more about the student than the teacher. I believe he, the student, was the MC on account of him having the greatest change throughout the story. The inciting incident him for the first time, to that point, in his academic career getting an unconventional teacher that radically changes his ability to appreciate literature in general and poetry in particular.
The teacher losing his job is, in many ways, a symbol of the death of the mentor, and ultimately helps motivate the main character to complete his journey.
Who is the main character if not the teacher? ?If it’s a student, which one? ?More than one student’s life is dramatically changed in response to the teacher’s method and message. ?The one who takes the impetus to re-constitute the Dead Poets Society ?ends up committing suicide.
I understand and fully embrace the standard operating plot procedure that the protagonist must have a character arc in terms of some internal, subjective issue that he has to overcome in order to achieve his external, objective goal.
But there are (rare) exceptions, and I think this is one of them. ?If that be heresy, then bind me to a stake and light the fire. ?(Woah, not so fast!) ?I?believe that the main character can?be a steadfast character?if he is also catalytic character, that is, one who causes other characters to change while he himself does not.
Professor Keating inhabits the role of a charismatic mentor to the students. ?Typically the mentor coaches from the sidelines after?an inciting incident in the protagonist’s life precipitated by other events. ?Example: ?”Star Wars: A New Hope”. ?Obi Wan Kenobi initiates the “Call” to Luke to become a Jedi Knight, but Luke rejects the call. ?And Obi Wan does not press the issue.
Only after, Imperial soldiers kill his aunt and uncle, ?does Luke heed the call and cast his lot with the rebels. ?Now he’s motivated.
?
In contrast, in “Dead Poets Society” ?Keating is the ?catalytic character who inspires the students to change. ?His lecture on ?”carpe diem” ?lecture is the inciting incident urging them to pursue extraordinary lives rather than conform to the rules and expectations of others.
(And Robin Williams won the Oscar for best Actor, not best supporting actor.)
I ?was under the impression that the main character in Dead Poets Society was the Ethan Hawk character,?I’ll confess that I had to look up the character name on IMDB it’s Todd.
Agreed that some films may be an exception in their structure and archetype characters, however I don’t know if that’s true in this instance about the role of the main character. An actor can be a part of the main cast but not the main character, therefore I believe Robin Williams received the award for best actor without being the main character.
The way I see it is?that the teacher/mentor, Keating, inspired the main character, Todd, to change his perception and subsequently to make a choice – conform to the narrow minded ways of old or be enlightened. After the death of his mentor (with strong symbolic references in the suicide) Todd choses to defy the institution and shouts out the truth, for which he gets expelled.
In essence I agree with what your saying about the mentor?coaching from the side line, and in my mind Keating does this. I think the inciting incident is the other student Neil, that kills himself, starting up the Dead Poets Society – Todd is given the opportunity to venture off on the journey to enlightenment and thanks to the teacher’s encouragement he does.
The mentor doesn’t commit suicide. ?He’s fired after Neil, a friend of Todd’s, commits suicide in Act 3. ?The suicide is the tragic denouement of Neil’s decision, inspired by Keating, to defy his father.
The protagonist is the character who drives the plot. Without him, the plot doesn’t even get started. ?In Star Wars, that’s Luke Skywalker. ?You could subtract ?the mentor, Obi Wan, and still have a story about a kid who takes on an evil galactic empire — a story that would track differently, of course, but the essence of the plot would remain the same. ?
In contrast, subtract Keating from “Dead Poets Society” and the plot never starts. Keating incites the kids to think and live differently. ?Without him, they remain compliant?cogs in the machine, conforming and uniform?”bricks in the wall” of the oppressive status quo.
And there is an arc to the character of Keating — but it is not in terms of a character flaw (unless one wishes to ascribe to him the ‘flaw’ of ?being too passionate about his subject and his themes). ?Rather, Keating’s arc is in terms of his circumstances; he undergoes a reversal of fortune from being hired (at the start of the movie) to fired (at the end). ?
The dramatic requirement that the protagonist undergo some kind of change is fulfilled in the movie, but it’s a change of fortune rather than ?a change of some subjective issue.
(BTW: The notion that the protagonist must have a character flaw that he must overcome or fail arises from a misunderstanding of what Aristotle meant by ‘hamartia’ in his classical text , “The Poetics”, ?the first and still the most influential treatise on drama. ?It’s proven to be a very useful misunderstanding for modern drama, but, imho, it’s not a binding, immutable requirement just because people misread Aristotle.)
I meant that the suicide was symbolic of death, not that Keating killed himself.
The protagonist (or in greek; primary fighter) is the one who takes action and more than other characters undergoes change – either external or internal. Keating undergoes a form of external change – job to no job, but nothing else, and he takes no other action than inspiring other characters to act. However, Todd undergoes an external change of values (how McKee of me?) from being a student in the fancy school to dismissal from the fancy school, as well as an inner change from wanting to conform to the rigid soulless institution to being able to think for himself.
If you qualify the protagonist on value of change Todd is it, he under goes more change than Keating, inner and outer at that.
If you qualify the protagonist on the value of the action they take, then Todd is still it?as he takes action by partaking in The Dead Poets Society, not forgetting that he speaks/shouts the truth at the end and subsequently defies the institution.
I suppose this is one we’ll have to agree to disagree on, in these ?exceptions it comes down to our own interpretations.
Nir Shelter:
Yes, we will have to respectfully disagree. ?I appreciate the time you’ve taken to courteously spar on the issue.
I agree with you that Todd undergoes more dramatic change in his character than Keating, more than anyone else in the story. ?I think that his story thread serves the dramatic purpose of salvaging a glimmer of hope in what is otherwise a tragic outcome. ?In the ‘good old days’ of Aristotle, a tragic ending with no glimmer of hope, no character growth spurt (arc of transformation) was good enough. ?Not so in modern drama.
If Todd is the designated protagonist, what is the resulting logline? ?What is his objective goal? ?What is the dramatic question?
And, finally, as loglines are a marketing tool, which version do you think would be more effective in selling the ?story were it still only in script form? ?The one “starring” ?Keating or the one “starring” Todd?
Regards and best wishes.
Good questions, Dkpough. ?Shouting matches and flame wars have erupted over what defines and what distinguishes the Hero from a Protagonist from a Main Character. Ask three people and you’ll get 3?different answers… or 4… or 5!
For me, the terms are tools, not rules. And I take my cue from the psychologist Abraham Maslow: ?when all you have to work with is a hammer, you have to treat everything as if it were a nail. ?In my experience, no single?term-tool works for “nailing down” all character roles. (Ditto for paradigm-tools for plotting.) ?So I grab the tool?that seems to works best for me in the particular story I’m working with.
As you observed, the three term-tools are often used interchangeably. ?My personal preference when working with loglines is the term-tool “protagonist” for the reasons I laid out earlier, ?Nir Shelter made valid points for applying the term-tool to someone else. Okay. If it works for him… it works.
As for Keating being the antagonist: ?it’s all relative. ?Keating is the antagonist from the pov of those enforcing the status quo, the academic administration and parents. ?But the story is not told from their pov. ?It’s told from the pov of the stakes’ characters.
“Stake characters” is ?term-tool I employ to ?describe the characters who have the most to gain or lose from the actions of the protagonist. ?And, who are also characters the audience can emotionally invest in — root for. ? Those are clearly the students. ?From their pov, Keating is ?a liberating mentor.
(Post a logline for “The Terminator”, and I’ll be happy to discuss that classic’s character roles.)
fwiw.
It’s threads like this that make me wish we had an open discussion board, one that’s not bound to a particular logline. I’ll chat with Karel and see what we can do to set one up.
Much like DPG I subscribe to a particular theorem on the matter – the hero’s journey, you can imagine my delight when I discovered that Karel teaches The Hero’s Journey. In this instance the tools are, for the most part, attributes of mythology analysed on the basis?of the metaphor they draw, and it’s according to archetypal characters referenced in these metaphors that we can define the function of characters in stories.
Regarding your questions about the main character v protagonist v hero, within the paradigm of the hero’s journey there are several ways to define theses roles:
Main Character ?- the character with the most amount of story/screen time.
Protagonist – a character that uses action, more than others, to progress the A plot.
Hero – the character that experiences the most amount of change over the course of the story, or the one with the greets lesson.
POV character – The character that holds the dramatic point of view in the scene (distinguished from the technical shot description of a camera POV).
I noted in my previous posts the reasoning for my opinion on the matter with regards to Dead Poets Society, but I invite you to watch the film and post your own take. As DPG mentioned earlier, this is not a typical story?so more opinions would help clarify via consensus the true definition of the main cast in the film.
P.S
The above descriptions are my interpretations of?Karel’s notes from his classes and posts on his blog – The Story Department:
http://thestorydepartment.com
Like Nir Shelter, I think the paradigm of the Hero’s Journey contains many useful tool-terms for building plots. In fact, I was tempted to do a post rendering DPS as a Hero’s Journey for the students but I just don’t have ?time to do it justice.
Except to point out that in the Hero’s Journey paradigm, the professor fills to overflowing the role of the Mentor. ?He’s the character who initiates “the Call” to ?the boys to carpe diem, sieze the day. ?In that paradigm, I would nominate Neil as the Hero because he’ takes the lead in responding to the Call. ?Neil finds the yearbook for Keating’s graduation year and the reference to the DPS. ?He leads the group into “Crossing the First Threshold” to the cave to re-institute the DPS.
However, when it comes to writing the logline, I stand pat with my version with Keating in the spotlight. ?Because:
1]It’s not an inaccurate representation of the script/film. ? But then, neither would a logline spotlighting Neil. ? Hmm, ?sort of a Rashomon situation — two different descriptions of the story, both of which are substantively accurate?
2] Here’s what tips the scales for me: IMHO, the logline spotlighting Keating– which, is after all, the starring role — is more marketable. ?If DPS still only existed in script form, I think the Keating logline would stand a better chance of getting the script read.
And I don’t recall a counter argument to my pov in the form of a ?logline with a student as protagonist. ?(Or did I miss it?)
?
This discussion has been fascinating to follow.
Having read THE HERO’S JOURNEY (a couple times…long ago), I’m familiar enough to follow along with and comprehend your terminology, while continuing to learn from it.
I’m not sold on Nir Shelter’s defined distinction between the following:
Protagonist – a character that uses action, more than others, to progress the A plot.
Hero – the character that experiences the most amount of change over the course of the story, or the one with the [greatest?] lesson.
I see that there should be a distinction, but that perhaps there should be another description altogether for “Hero,” while “Protagonist” assimilates the given definition of the other.
What that new definition for “Hero” should, then, be might already be defined by Vogler. If I knew where my copy was, I’d gladly research it myself.
Here you go:
http://www.thewritersjourney.com/hero's_journey.htm
The books have far more detail but as an online resource this provides a few good points.
Protagonist, as defined in greek, means the primary fighter. The hero, according to ?Campbell, will face an ordeal and return with the elixir. In other words, the hero will undergo change and learn a lesson over the course of the journey.
As there is no definitive description for either hero or protagonist, that sets them as conventions by which the industry operates, it seems that the particulars of the definitions are up to the writer at hand. Please read for yourself (as you have done in the past) and I’m sure you’ll come up with?definitions that are not far from the ones I posted.
IMHO: ?the “Hero’s Journey” is a paradigm best suited for stories about men in the 1st half of life. ?Like the students in DPS. ?It doesn’t address the psychological and existential agendas of men in later life. ?Nor to women at any age.
(I am curious to see how — if — they can work out Rey’s ?character arc in the reboot of the Star Wars franchise so that it more substantial than a ?guy’s “Hero’s Journey” in drag. ?Given the fact that all the writers in “The Force Awakens” were guys, ?I’m not optimistic.)
IMHO