Abstract
No matter who, what, or where they are in their life at the beginning of a story, one thing is always true: The Protagonist must confront change. They are leading an inauthentic existence, a disjunction between how the Protagonist lives in their ordinary world and an unconscious part of their psyche—the seeds of their true self. Their state of disunity cannot be sustained. This chapter cites several examples in movies and television, then examines five notable Protagonists whose metamorphosis moves from disunity to unity: Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs, Walter White in Breaking Bad, William Shakespeare in Shakespeare in Love, Rebecca Bunch in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and Miles Morales in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
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Notes
- 1.
C. G. Jung, “Aion,” Collected Works 9ii (Princeton University Press, 1970), p. 126.
- 2.
Ibid.
- 3.
The other two movies: It Happened One Night (1934) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975).
- 4.
Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan: The Man Who Turned Walter White from Mr. Chips into Scarface, The Guardian, May 18, 2012, https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2012/may/19/vince-gilligan-breaking-bad.
- 5.
In S5, Ep6 (“Buyout”), White reveals to Jesse that the current value of Gray Matter Technologies is $2.16 billion, making his original share worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
- 6.
Cinema Review, http://www.cinemareview.com/production.asp?prodid=428.
- 7.
‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’: Rachel Bloom Talks Mental Health and Writing a New Theme Song Every Season, The Hollywood Reporter, August 5, 2019, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/crazy-girlfriend-rachel-bloom-talks-mental-health-writing-theme-songs-1228538.
- 8.
The Crazy Ex-Girlfriend episode titles use punctuation in a telling way. In Season One, all of the titles (except for 117) end in an exclamation point which reflects Rebecca’s manic obsession with Josh. In Season Two, all of the titles end in a question mark which speaks to the underlying question, “Will Rebecca succeed in wooing Josh to become her lover and eventual husband?” Seven Season Three episode titles end with periods covering the stage of her life in which Rebecca ends her fixation with Josh, while four episode titles end with question marks as Rebecca shifts her romantic fixation from Josh to Nathaniel, a replication of her previous attempts to seek external validation from a male lover. [S3, Ep12 (“Trent?!”) ends with both a question mark and exclamation point which speaks to the surprise of Trent’s return and devious plan of action; S3, Ep13 (“Nathaniel Is Irrelevant.”) ends with a period reflecting how by the end of the third season, Rebecca is ready to face herself and take responsibilities for her actions.] In Season Four, each of the seventeen episode titles has no ending punctuation which suggests by series end, Rebecca is free to move on with the rest of her life, her future an open-ended one.
Further Study
Four Screenplays: Studies in the American Screenplay, Syd Field (editor), Delta Publishing, 1994.
Breaking Bad: The Official Book, David Thomson, Sterling Publishing, 2015.
Shakespeare in Love: A Screenplay, Marc Norman (screenwriter), Tom Stoppard (screenwriter), Miramax, 1999.
Perspectives on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: Nuanced Postnetwork Television (Television and Popular Culture), Amanda Konkle (editor), Charles Burnetts (editor), Syracuse University Press, 2021.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, screenplay by Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman, story by Phil Lord. Movie script, December 3, 2018.
References
Bloom, R. and Brosh McKenna, A. (creator) (2015–2019). Crazy Ex-Girlfriend; The CW Network.
Gilligan, V. (creator) (2008–2013). Breaking Bad; American Movie Classics (AMC).
Jung, C. G. (1970). “Aion,” Collected Works 9ii; Princeton University Press.
Lord, P. and Rothman, R. (screenplay), Lord P. (story) (2018). Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse; Marvel Entertainment/Sony Pictures Entertainment.
Norman, M. and Stoppard, T. (written by) (1998). Shakespeare in Love; Miramax Films.
Tally, T. (screenplay), Harris, T. (novel) (1991). The Silence of the Lambs; Orion Pictures.
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Myers, S. (2022). Disunity. In: The Protagonist's Journey. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79682-2_3
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